Generations

by Tim Lebbon

  “They’re on their own just like we are,” Zoë said. “Jayne and Kaylee’ll head back to the ship.”

  “If it’s even still there when we arrive.”

  “It’ll be there,” Zoë said. “Wash will make sure of that. And besides, it can’t not be there.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if it’s gone, we’re humped.”

  “I can get us to Serenity,” River said.

  “Maybe we’re needing to find our own way,” Mal said. He couldn’t trust her, not normally, and certainly not now, when everything was far from normal.

  River closed her eyes and pressed her hand to the bulkhead.

  “I said, we’ll find our own way.”

  “Mal, could be the girl—”

  “Could be the girl can lead us right into that.” He pointed along the corridor in the general direction of the echoing gunshots. At that moment, they ceased. The silence that replaced them was heavy. Mal heard his own breathing, and he rested his hand on the gun at his belt. “We move slow and careful. Keep our ears wide, and our eyes wider.”

  “And hope he doesn’t turn out the lights again,” Zoë said. “Ever felt you’re being toyed with?”

  “Too many gorramn times.”

  * * *

  “Now that is a really, really big destroyer,” Wash said. “I bet one of those makes a real mess when it explodes, eh?”

  “Shut up,” Private Harksen said.

  “Or what? You can’t kill me unless you absolutely have to.”

  “The sergeant said nothing about severe injury.”

  Wash nodded and sat back in his seat. Harksen definitely did look like she could hurt him, that was for sure. He wasn’t someone averse to fighting if the need arose, and he’d been in enough scrapes in his time to claim a certain talent for the gun. However, Wash had always been more inclined to talk his way out of trouble. Zoë was usually there if more than words were needed. In Harksen, he saw that same simmering danger that was ever-present in Zoë.

  He had to be careful. Truth was, he often talked so much that he just put himself deeper in trouble, rather than climbing out. Yet the captain definitely needed to know what was happening. Trouble was, Wash had no idea how to go about telling him without Private Harksen stopping him in his tracks.

  Nestled down in the damaged crater on the surface of the Sun Tzu, his view over the ragged rim and out into deep space was now obscured by an Alliance destroyer. Smaller than the city-sized cruisers, still the destroyers were huge vessels, easily fifty times the size of Serenity, bristling with weapons, sensor arrays, and docking arms and bays containing combat shuttles and the smaller short-range enforcement vessels that did most of their dirty work in-system or in atmospheres. It looked mean and eager to cause injury to whoever might meet it face to face.

  Next to the old Generation ship from Earth-That-Was, the destroyer looked like a child’s toy.

  Wash froze and caught his breath. The idea of toys gave him an idea. It was foolish, and stupid, but it was a passive attempt to communicate with Mal and the rest of the crew.

  “Hey, do you like dinosaurs, by any chance?”

  Harksen eyed him up and down, her weapon never wavering. It had been pointing at his seat since the sergeant left her on guard, and Wash read her as an efficient, well-trained soldier. A grunt, if he had to choose a term. But a good one.

  “Huh?” Still the gun didn’t waver, but she was unsettled now, and unsure what he was doing. He guessed that Private Harksen was more used to being shouted or shot at.

  “Beasties from Earth-That-Was. I’ve got these little fellas. I’ve never really named them.” He reached for the model dinosaurs he kept on his flight console. “I’ve had them here a while. They keep me company. This is a triceratops, I think, or a T. rex. And maybe this one is a stegosaurus. Or it could be they’re the other way around?” He held one dinosaur in each hand, moving them back and forth, playfully butting their plastic heads as if they were having a fight.

  As he lifted one model up and swished it through the air, he knocked the comm switch with the other, thinking, I just hope they’ve canceled the blocking signal.

  “So do Alliance soldiers always carry guns like yours?” he asked. He hadn’t been able to turn off the speakers, so if the comm channels had been opened successfully, these were the first words the crew would hear, and they’d hopefully be canny enough not to reply. Just listen, he thought. And Jayne, if you can keep your mouth shut for just a short time, maybe this’ll work.

  Private Harksen didn’t even glance down at her gun. She didn’t take her eyes off Wash and what he was doing, and while he didn’t think she was suspicious of the dinosaur models, his actions had made her even more alert and on edge. He’d witnessed itchy trigger fingers before, and he didn’t like provoking an itch, not one bit. He had to make this quick.

  “Okay, don’t want to answer that one. Can you tell me why that big destroyer is so close to the Sun Tzu, then? And down toward the stern too. Eh, what do we think about that, dinosaurs? And how come your sergeant only left you and a couple of others on board Serenity? Although you’re the only one needed to guard me, I’ll admit to that, I’m not happy being on the end of your gun.”

  A noise sounded over the speaker. It was a loud roar, but then it broke into a rattle of gunfire, a shout, running feet.

  “Zoë?” Wash blurted out.

  “What the hell—?”

  He glanced back just in time to receive the butt of Harksen’s gun on his nose. He fell back, gasping as the pain spread across his face and down his neck, and blood from his pulped nose flowed down over his open mouth.

  Harksen turned off the comm again and spun Wash’s chair around, turning him away from the console. Wash could hardly see. His eyes watered, and the pain roared through his skull, hot and overwhelming. He wasn’t a man who dealt well with pain, and that had been even more the case since Niska had taken and tortured him.

  “I told you I was allowed to hurt you,” Private Harksen said. “Next time it won’t be so gentle.”

  Next time, Wash thought. Damn, there better not be a next time.

  Despite the agony in his face, from what little he’d heard before Harksen knocked off the comms, it sounded like the others were in far more trouble than him.

  * * *

  Their suit comms crackled back to life as soon as the Alliance had completed boarding Serenity. And, Mal guessed, had landed on the Sun Tzu. It was their standard procedure, but it didn’t comfort him one little bit.

  Especially the first sounds that came through their earpieces.

  “You heard that, Mal.”

  “I heard Wash filling us in on what’s going on.”

  “And then he was hit.”

  “Hit, not shot.” Zoë frowned at him. “Zoë, Wash has been hit before, and he was already ugly. He’ll be fine.”

  “He better be,” Zoë said. “I’d be lost without him. You know that, sir.”

  “I know that.”

  “Something’s coming,” River said, and those simple words uttered in her gentle, matter-of-fact voice sent a chill down Mal’s spine. He didn’t chill easy.

  “What’s coming?” he asked.

  River frowned, listening, then crouched and pressed her hand against the floor. They were in another corridor, one that looked like any others they’d been in. Closed doors lined both walls, with thirty feet between each doorway. Mal wondered what was behind each door, and the mystery had been nipping at his heels as they ran. He was so frustrated that they didn’t have time to explore further. It wasn’t all about the loot anymore—not so much, anyway—but the knowledge as well.

  “Oh…” River said, and then she started shaking. “Oh no, oh… two by two, hands of blue…”

  “River?” Zoë asked. She knelt next to the girl and held her, perceiving instantly when she needed comfort. It was another reason Mal trusted and relied on Zoë so much.

  “They’re coming this way,” River whispered,
almost too quiet to hear.

  “Those blue-handed guys?” Mal muttered. He’d heard of those blue-handed freaks from Ariel, and just how many Alliance personnel they’d brutally killed just to try and get to River. Zoë glanced at him, then behind him, and he turned to the nearest closed door in the corridor wall. He tried the opening pad and nothing happened, the workings were clogged with dust. He pulled his tools and got to work, but River’s soft, desperate whimper and Zoë’s calming tones put him on edge, and he dropped one of the implements. He moved quickly so that it bounced from his foot and didn’t make too much noise.

  “She’s withdrawn,” Zoë said. “Mal, she’s somewhere else. I haven’t seen her like this in ages.”

  “She’s terrified,” Mal said. He picked up his tools and set to work again, concentrating, breathing long and slow, trying to apply himself to this door and this lock and nothing else. No long, twisting corridor; no unseen battle in the distance; no trouble on Serenity, Alliance boarding; no vast, hulking ship that might very well become a drifting sarcophagus for them all.

  No Hands of Blue. He felt sick even thinking of them, knowing what they were and what they could do.

  With a click the locking mechanism shifted and the opening pad glowed red beneath the dust. Mal tapped it and the door ground open. He winced at the noise it made, then ushered River through. Zoë had to help her, and he saw with alarm that the girl was staring vacantly into the distance, unmoving.

  Mal entered the room and hit the panel to close the door. It jammed halfway.

  Zoë stared at him, wide-eyed.

  River moaned again and broke from Zoë, retreating to the farthest extreme of the small room, curling into a ball in the corner. It was a sleeping quarters, with a bunk bed against each wall and a couple of easy chairs and table in the center. It had been vacated, with little left behind. Mal was glad. The last thing he needed now was a shriveled corpse in pajamas.

  He tried the door again. Motors whined and ground. The leading edge shuddered and moved, but stuck again a hand’s width from closing.

  River’s eyes were wide and staring at the door. The room’s low-level lighting was on, and Mal tapped at the control and turned it off, plunging them into darkness. The only light in the quarters now was that filtering in from outside, a tall narrow band slanting in through the stuck door like a reaching arm.

  Mal heard footsteps. He drew his gun, ready to shoot at a moment’s notice. His heart was hammering, despite his attempts to calm himself. Zoë was pressed against one of the bunks away from the band of light, gun in hand, and River was barely a shadow in the corner of the room. There was one set of footsteps, but it carried a faint, confusing echo. Two as one, he thought, and then shadows flitted by the door and passed beyond. They were heading the same way as Mal and the others, toward the violence rather than away, and as they passed along the corridor he moved to the door and peered through the opening. He saw them from behind, moving from light to shadow, two tall, identically dressed women in dark clothing with hair tied up in buns, and hands clad in blue. They each carried something bulky in their right hand. They did not pause, but Mal still held his breath as they disappeared out of sight. He glanced back and forth from the corridor to River, watching for any sign of relaxation in her that might mean the blue-gloved pair had moved on.

  Zoë caught his attention and raised her eyebrows. Mal indicated that they’d passed, and Zoë tapped her ear and leaned toward the doors. Mal nodded and listened. They were out of sight, but that didn’t mean they were out of earshot, and perhaps they had sensed River and were even now creeping back along the corridor pressed tight to the wall, lurking closer.

  There was no movement or sound outside, and when he glanced back at River she was slowly uncurling from the ball she’d hugged herself into. She crawled to the doorway and crouched below Mal, sniffing at the light slanting in.

  “Gone away,” River whispered, and she looked up at Mal. He saw the terror nestled in her eyes, and even knowing a little about what those blue-gloved freaks were capable of, he realized how brave she was being. He nodded and smiled.

  “We’ve got you,” he said.

  “But who’s got you?” she asked. She pulled herself to her feet. “They weren’t looking for me. I don’t think they know I’m here. It’s him they want.”

  “That’s a good thing for us,” Mal said.

  “But not for him.”

  “He’s out of our control,” Mal said.

  “So would I be if it weren’t for Simon. If it weren’t for…” She glanced at Mal and he knew who she meant. Him, and the rest of the crew.

  “He was in the Academy with you?” Mal asked.

  “Long before me,” River said. “He was their first. Their experiment. There was talk of a failure, but…” She shivered. “We knew of him as a legend, like a god. Or a devil.”

  “They’re goin’ the way we need to go,” Mal said.

  “Which means we change direction,” Zoë said. “Right, sir?”

  Mal thought about this for a while, and he felt a sense of restrained panic settling around him, the sort that always hovered but only really possessed him when he felt control slipping away.

  “River,” he said. She looked at him, frowned. “River?” He was really asking her now, and he saw a flicker of something other than fear in her eyes. It might have been gratitude, but he thought it was more likely pride.

  “I want to help him,” she said. “None of this is his fault. It’s their fault. But we can’t mix with the Hands of Blue,” she said. “They have weapons that’ll make your brains boil and eyes bleed from your skulls.”

  “Remind me to invite them next time we have a dinner party,” Mal said. “Okay, so we find another way back to Serenity. Hopefully they’ll be kept occupied with whatever that shootin’ and screamin’ was all about.”

  “Not Jayne and Kaylee,” Zoë said, and it was a hope more than a statement. If she’d been of a godly bent, it would have been a prayer.

  “Hopefully not. Back the way we came, then we’ll jig along another corridor. Let’s move.”

  * * *

  We walk toward the firestorm, and we are pleased that the distraction is going so well. While Silas is slaughtering the soldiers, we are able to get closer, closer. There was the chance that a force of troopers would be able to take him down, but that chance was remote. It was always going to be us in the end.

  The soldiers are bait.

  As we near the site of battle, the shooting ends. We pause, silent and ready, and one of us looks at the schematics of the ship contained in our hand-held scanners. Heat traces are clear, but the activated systems on board are interfering with the readings. Thermal blooms grow and fade again, and in places whole areas of the ship are alight on the screen. We will have to rely on other means of detection.

  “He’ll still be close,” one of us says.

  “We should hurry.”

  “But with care.”

  We move forward, passing through areas of the old ship where we walked one time before, long ago, when we first imprisoned Silas here. He is our creation, but we realized quickly that he was far too dangerous to keep awake, and yet too remarkable to destroy. Out here, far from the Core, held in the grasp of one of the ancient yet advanced Earth-That-Was suspension devices, we always hoped that he would be safe. Between then and now little has changed, and we have always hoped that we would never be here again. He’s not like the others. He was the first.

  And he is far, far worse. We hoped that the soldiers would keep him occupied for longer, but there are plenty more on the way. We move quickly, cautiously, but by the time we reach the site of action we sense that he is long gone. All he has left behind is the evidence of his abilities.

  The dead are everywhere. Even those shot cleanly through the heart have been torn and mutilated. He always did like the blood. He was made that way, and we respect that, because there’s something almost experimental about his actions, a clean appreciation of his
talents that he wishes to explore and reveal. We sometimes feel the same urge to explore, though he is more… human than us. A curious difference.

  He is gone, but we can follow. We have the equipment required to put him back down, if we can get close enough. For that, we have to retain the element of surprise. And for that, we have to achieve our aims as quickly as possible.

  Simon wondered if he’d been foolish coming onto the Sun Tzu on his own to look for his sister, but it wasn’t the first stupid thing he’d done for her, and he was sure it wouldn’t be the last. He’d given up one life for River, and started another, and over the time he’d spent on Serenity he was sort of getting used to it. He’d seen a huge difference in River lately, especially since he’d managed to get some idea of what they’d done to her mind. From that he’d been able to formulate a medicine and treatment plan, and slowly but surely he could sense an improvement in her wellbeing. Though his life had changed he was still a doctor, although for a much smaller circle of patients than he’d ever intended, and there were other plus points too. Kaylee, for one.

  Coming here had changed everything. He’d always known that there were others like River—he’d seen them at the Academy when he rescued her, and sometimes in her darkest moments she remembered them, calling them her shadows or ghosts—but he had hoped never to meet one. The more River’s rehabilitation and acceptance progressed, the worse he knew the implications would be should she encounter another experimental subject of Dr. Mathias and the Alliance.

  He’d sneaked off Serenity and onto the Sun Tzu, worried with every second that passed that Wash would spot his movement and do something to stop him. Neither of them was a fighter, yet both of them would if they had to. But Wash had not seen him leaving, and now Simon felt like he’d stepped back in time. This old, almost legendary ship was a wonder, an echo that hung heavy and still around him. The ghosts of humanity’s past whispered with every step he took, and he was in equal parts fascinated and daunted. But it was the ghosts of the present that drove him forward.