by Tim Lebbon
Wash stretched higher, breathing deeply.
“Don’t try to distract us!”
“I wasn’t,” he said. “Look, I’m just the pilot.”
“Then what’re you doing back here?” the sergeant asked.
“I told you, coolant leak.” He saw the sergeant glance to one side, and heard the faint chatter of radio comms in his earpiece.
“Back to the bridge,” the sergeant said. “Private Harksen is right behind you. Any tricks, any movements, any surprises from out of the shadows, and you’ll be blasted. Got that?”
“No tricks, no surprises,” Wash said, but as they left the engine room he thought, I hope Simon really has left the ship.
There were several other Alliance soldiers on board. They’d entered through the airlock above and behind the galley area, and they stalked Serenity in pairs. Wash knew it would take them hours to search the entire ship thoroughly. Anything that occupied them and kept their weapons not pointing at him was a good thing.
Once back on the bridge, Private Harksen nudged him into his pilot’s seat. She scanned the panels, then threw the switch that disabled ship-to-ship comms. They’d already be blocking them, as well as the crew’s suit-to-suit communications, so she was just making sure. “Keep your hands away from the controls,” she said.
“Naturally.” Wash folded his hands in his lap. He was nervous but not scared. They’d been boarded by Alliance before and survived to tell the tale.
Yet something about this felt different.
The sergeant stood back through the doors at the head of the stairway, communicating with others on Serenity as they conducted their search. Wash found it odd that they’d not asked him for whatever they were looking for, but maybe they were just ensuring that the ship really was clear of other crew.
“So you fixed the problem?” Private Harksen asked. She was standing behind the captain’s chair, gun still pointing at Wash’s chest.
“You mean the…”
“In the engine room. The problem. Fixed?”
“Fixed,” Wash said.
“So this bird’s ready to fly?”
“Ready.”
Private Harksen nodded, glancing left and right. She was nervous. That’s what was different about this, Wash realized. She and her sergeant were bullish and aggressive as Alliance soldiers always were, but something else was settled behind their eyes. Nervousness.
Wash eyed the access hatch to the escape pod above the bridge. If things went south with these grunts on board, it would take him too long to get there. He’d be humped.
“We good in here?” the sergeant said as he entered the bridge, and Wash expected the private to be evasive, keeping their conversation to herself.
“Ship’s ready to fly, and he’s the pilot,” Harksen said, pointing at Wash with her gun.
“Good. Stay here, stay ready. He doesn’t move to eat, sleep, or piss, and neither do you. Understand?”
“Affirmative, sir.”
“Good. And don’t kill him unless you absolutely have to.”
* * *
With the man who must be Silas so close to them, Kaylee couldn’t even bring herself to speak. Jayne had heard too, but he was more cocky and brash than her, and far more likely to give them away. So she grasped his arm and pulled him down beside her. She switched off her comm and indicated that he should do the same, eyed the bags over his shoulders, wondering how many ways they could make a noise—bash against the bulkhead, contents clanging together, thumping on the floor if he dropped them. She breathed through her mouth because it sounded quieter.
Why am I so terrified to give myself away? she wondered, confused at why they’d both felt the compulsion to hide. Silas had not done Mal and the others any harm when he outed the power and fled, but then they had River with them. And when Kaylee stole another glance into the large open space, she realized why she was so afraid. His name was Silas, Mal had said, and he might have been asleep for a long time, though not as long as the rest of this ship. The Alliance had placed him all the way out here, away from everyone and everything, too precious to destroy, too dangerous to keep awake.
Now he slept no more.
Silas remained standing in the center of the large space. It was a vestibule of some sort, with a high domed ceiling and at least six corridors converging from different directions. They hadn’t come this way, and Kaylee had been about to berate Jayne for his navigational skills when she’d heard fast footsteps approaching. The acoustics of the domed room made it difficult to tell which direction they were coming from, so Kaylee had led them to the edge where the curved wall met the floor.
Silas was short, lean, dressed in simple T-shirt and shorts. His skin was glimmering with moisture or some kind of gel, and she saw scars and marks on his neck and throat. Something about his bearing also seemed familiar, and it didn’t take her long to recognize why—so much about him reminded her of River.
She and Jayne were hunkered down behind a chest-high pedestal, which might once have been some sort of reception desk, or perhaps even a bar. There were piles of papers stacked in a recess beneath the desk, and maybe they contained the names of the crew, even pictures. Though in danger she was curious, but now was not the time to look. Kaylee pressed her fingers to her lips, and Jayne nodded. Did he look afraid? She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him looking truly afraid, or if he ever could be. He rested his hand on his gun, but he knew not to draw it from its holster.
A deathly silence filled the space. Even though the ship’s power had come on again, sending a rumbling whisper through the air, that somehow went to make the quiet even deeper, a solid thing hanging heavy around them.
Silas breathed in deeply, then exhaled with a heavy sigh.
He can smell me, Kaylee thought. He’ll know where we are, he’ll come to us and—
Jayne touched her arm and caught her attention. He cupped his ear and she did the same.
Someone, or something, was approaching.
Kaylee leaned to the side and peeked around the edge of the pedestal again. Silas seemed distracted, his head tilted to one side as if listening. As before, it was difficult for her to tell which direction the growing sound came from, but her imagination caught on fire, and she saw tunnels filled with crawling, scrabbling shapes, cadavers trailing pipes and tubes, still seeking their final destinations even though they had arrived in the ’verse long, long ago. She imagined their mouths drooping open in silent screams, and their long, cracked fingernails scratching along cold metal walls.
Her breathing came faster, and she blinked quickly to banish the image. When she opened them again she saw Alliance soldiers pouring out from one corridor into the open space.
They spread either side of the corridor entrance, and several of them crouched down and leveled their weapons at Silas. Others continued around the room’s perimeter, half-encircling him. They were still wearing their full space suits and helmets, and they were all heavily armed.
Kaylee caught Jayne’s eye, and he raised his eyebrows and hunkered down some more. She did the same. She could hear the crackling whispers of Alliance comms, a soup of voices from which she could discern no sense.
She shrugged at Jayne. What do we do?
He shrugged back. Touched his gun. Nodded up and away from them both. There’s going to be shooting.
And then we can run, Kaylee thought, but she had no idea which direction to take. If she’d been the praying kind, she might have asked for salvation. Shepherd Book would have known the correct words, and the right way to say them.
“I’ve been asleep for so long that the whole universe is my dream,” a voice said. Kaylee peered around the pedestal, looking past a pair of soldiers at Silas, still standing in the center of the room.
“You’re completely surrounded in this room,” one of the Alliance troopers said. “And beyond, you’re also surrounded in this ship. And even if you escaped the ship, you’d be blasted into the Black.”
“I know the Black
so well,” Silas said. His voice was deeper than Kaylee had imagined looking at him, edged with an age and wisdom that belied his physical appearance. “I was born into the light, but you took me away and cast me down into the darkness.”
“I… have orders to ensure your safe recovery.” The soldier in command no longer sounded so confident. Still crouched down low, Kaylee looked around the wide space at the soldiers around the room’s edges. They were standing or crouched, and all of them were ready to fire. They were shifting from foot to foot, aiming their weapons but twitchy. She couldn’t tell who was doing the talking, because they all looked the same in their space suits and helmets. She could not see their faces. She was glad.
A hand closed around her arm and pulled her back behind cover. She felt Jayne’s breath on her ear, then heard his voice, soft and urgent.
“We gotta keep low and quiet,” he said. “We gotta have no one knowing we’re here. Especially him.” She heard the fear in his voice, and her question was answered.
Yes, Jayne could be afraid.
“I am the only reality,” Silas said. “My dreams are the only real place. Tell me, what does it feel like to be imaginary?”
The room fell silent as the question hung on the air.
“What does it feel like?” Silas asked again after a long pause.
“Er…” the commanding soldier said. He had nothing.
Kaylee’s breath caught in her throat and she thought, That was the end of something and the start of something new.
After a shuffle of rapid movement, and the first gunshot, the screaming began.
Bullets whipped the wall above their heads, and Kaylee leaned against the back of the pedestal, hands pressed over her ears. The shock of the sudden violence, the noise, grasped a cool fist around her heart. Jayne leaned beside her, gun in his hand, eyes wide but aware. Shards and shrapnel rained down on her, and she heard more shouts and screams, more gunfire, the stomping of feet, the terrible crunching of bone audible even above the shooting, and a heavy wet thump as something landed close to them.
She made a mistake and looked. The soldier was still blinking, even though her helmet had been torn from her head, and that head wrenched from her neck. Her body lay further away, still connected by stretched skin, stringy ligaments, and a widening pool of blood.
“Oh—” Kaylee gasped, before Jayne tugged her toward him so she could no longer see.
“We gotta go,” he said, and she knew he was right.
“He did that?” she asked.
“Looks that way. We’ve gotta go!”
Kaylee nodded. If they waited until this was over, maybe all they’d be was the final two victims. They had to leave now, while everyone else was dying.
A long, high scream rose up, echoing from the walls alongside the gunfire. It was cut off in mid-flow, but the shooting continued.
Crouching, gun in his right hand, Jayne counted down with the fingers on his left.
Three…
Two…
One…
They stood and ran, and for those few seconds Kaylee looked around the room at the chaos, the carnage, and more bloodshed than she had ever witnessed. Shock thumped at her, a heavy heat in her chest and gut, but she kept running, unable to unsee. She could smell and taste blood on the air. The mist of terror before her eyes was red.
It’s like that time when River shot those men, she thought, because the speed and brutality of this felt the same.
Bodies of Alliance soldiers lay scattered around the room, some of them in pieces, steaming in pools of blood and sliding down the walls. Space suits were ripped and torn, helmets crushed. A couple still writhed and crawled, calling and reaching for help that would never come. Walls were torn and speckled with bullet holes, and here and there flames licked where incendiary rounds had been used. The few soldiers remaining alive were retreating up corridors, their continuing gunfire flashing and silhouetting them against their surroundings.
Silas was a flickering vision dashing back and forth across the room. He splashed through spilled blood and spread delicate footprints across the floor, sprang from walls, ducked into and out of corridor entrances, and wherever he paused for more than a heartbeat he left a dead or dying soldier behind. Kaylee heard bones breaking and crunching, but there seemed to be no pattern to how he killed. She saw him dispatch one man with a chop to the throat from behind, a knee in the back, and then a rapid movement that snapped his spine. Graceful, deadly, terrifying. He moved on to a woman carrying a heavy machine gun, seemingly dodging bullets as he danced and jumped from floor to wall and down again, knocking the weapon from her hand and catching it up as it bounced from the floor, turning it around and pressing the hot barrel to her face—
Kaylee managed to turn away just as the machine gun sang its deadly song.
She followed Jayne into an arched doorway and ran into him as he skidded to a halt. Looking past him she saw two soldiers trying to drag a third behind them, leaving a trail of blood from the injured man’s shattered legs. He was groaning in pain, helmet knocked aside and face covered in blood, but when he saw them he gave one sharp shout and brought his gun up to bear.
Jayne shot him between the eyes. The armor-piercing round slammed his head back, and the two soldiers hauling him heard the shot even above the cacophony from behind them, felt the change of weight in their companion, and turned around. They would not hesitate, Kaylee knew. There would be no discussion, no conversing with them. Everything that moved and did not wear an Alliance uniform was an enemy.
Jayne shot them both in the throat above their armored suits. One fell onto her back, dropping her weapon and clasping both hands to the wound. The other staggered back but raised his gun, pulling his trigger as it came up and stitching a line of bullets across the floor toward them. Jayne shot him once more in the head, then he dispatched the other soldier with a similar shot.
Kaylee could hardly breathe through the shock. The deafening gunfire continued behind them, the domed room and corridors catching the echoes and bouncing them up and down, back and forth, until it sounded like one continuous, apocalyptic roar. Jayne’s shots had hardly added to the noise, but Kaylee couldn’t help thinking, What if Silas heard?
She shoved Jayne in the back, said, “We have to run!”
River has never felt so conflicted. She hates Silas for that, but in a way she loves him too. How can she not love someone whose dreadful trauma has made him her brother? Looking at him is like looking in a mirror and seeing her own eyes. They were created by the same forces, and her fervent hope was that Silas would be able to give her answers—why was she created? What did they do to her at the Academy? What is her purpose?
And yet she feels loyalty to her blood-brother and friends.
Simon is always there for her. Even now she has a feeling that he is on board the Sun Tzu, and if that’s true then he has come solely to find her. Though he gives everything, he asks for nothing back.
The crew, too. They’ve become like an extended family to her, each in different ways. Acceptance has not been easy for them, and she can hardly blame them for that. Sometimes she finds it difficult to accept herself. What she has become—what she has been turned into—is something that is difficult to inhabit alongside her usual self. She knows so much more. She sees so much more. When necessary, she flows and moves with the grace of light, almost without the encumbrance of flesh and bone. All these experiences are strange, and here she hopes, with Silas, to find a way to accept and process them. To embrace them.
* * *
“Wait,” Mal said. “Heads up. Hear that?”
Zoë listened.
“Kaylee?” Mal asked. “Jayne?” There was no answer. Their comms were down, and Wash had also gone offline. The Alliance must have blocked all communications that were not their own.
“Hún dàn Alliance,” Mal said. “We’re cut off. And can’t you hear that gorramn noise?”
Zoë listened again, frowning.
“It’s
singing,” River said. “Music flowing, and dancing, like ballet.”
“Maybe you hear that, but I hear shooting.”
“I might hear it too,” Zoë said.
“So the Alliance are on board,” Mal said. “They have Serenity, and now they’ve come for your friend.”
“He wouldn’t harm them unless they make him,” River said, frowning.
“Intimidated the hell outta me,” Mal said. “So what’s his story? You brought us here to find him.”
“The map brought you here.” Sometimes when she looked like that, Mal saw so much more in her young woman’s eyes. So much wisdom.
“You said he was just like you.”
“He was the first of us, many years before,” River said, and her eyes went distant, almost dreamy. “Those who made me, and others like me, thought they’d failed with Silas. We heard about him, stories whispered among test subjects, rumors passed in secret. And we realized that they hadn’t failed at all. What they thought of as a mistake created something amazing. They were so scared of what they made that…” She paused and seemed to return to the moment.
“That they shut him away out here,” Mal said.
“I never dared dream I might find him,” River said. “I’ve come to help him, and ask him questions.”
“About what?”
“About me,” River said.
“Whatever’s happening here is beyond us now,” Mal said. “You might’ve come seekin’ answers, and we came looking for valuables, but now we gotta concentrate on escaping with our lives.”
“I vote we go away from the sounds of shooting and killing,” Zoë said.
“Serenity’s that way.”
“Then we go around.”
“If they’re threatening him, he’ll be done by the time we get there,” River said. “It’s not a battle we’re listening to.”
“Then what is it?” Mal asked.
“It’s just him moving on, and someone’s in his way.”
“Let’s hope that someone isn’t Jayne,” Zoë said.
“Even Jayne ain’t that stupid.” Mal believed it, yet he couldn’t shake the idea of Jayne standing up to Silas. Pride might make him do that. And stupidity. Jayne surely had enough of the latter to fill up three people, and then some.