by Tim Lebbon
“I know it’s bleeding again!” Wash shouted. “It’s gorramn broken, and gushing gorramn blood down my best gorramn shirt, now get your ass off my spaceship control console, sit in the captain’s chair, and make yourself gorramn useful!”
Jayne skipped across to the captain’s chair and sat down, too shocked at Wash’s outburst to respond.
“The handle on your left, the gray one with the leather picked off from its lower edge by Mal’s nervous little fingers, you see it?”
“Got it.”
“Okay… Jayne… you need a steady hand here. Your one good hand’s steady, right?”
Jayne held up his free hand. It had blood on it. “Steady as a rock.”
“I need to concentrate on yaw and drift, and I’ll need you to edge that forward, just edge it, when I say.”
“Retro?” Jayne asked.
“Right. It’ll slow us. But just a touch, Jayne.”
“Just a gentle touch,” Jayne said. “I’ll pretend I’m touching a woman’s—”
“Just wait for my word,” Wash said. “Kaylee?”
“Here.”
“Hold on to something.”
“That’s comforting.”
“Just in case,” Wash said.
“Just in case what?” Jayne asked.
“Just in case I get this wrong and we crash into the Sun Tzu in a blazing exploding mess.”
Wash took a deep breath and readied his hands over the controls.
“Mal,” he said, “I’m bringing Serenity in close to make a sweep along the ship’s hull. I think sensors’ll pick out an airlock, but—”
“Send me coordinates, then get there,” Mal said. “The hull’s breached, and Silas is onto us.”
“Okay,” Wash said. “That’s more pressure. Good. My nose hurts, but pain doesn’t matter because you forget it, given time.”
“Your nose?” Zoë asked. “Is your nose damaged?”
“I was shot!” Jayne said.
“Don’t worry, baby. My nose is fine. Just be ready.”
The worst thing about the Sun Tzu’s movement was its unpredictability. Back around the other side, the destroyer must have impacted it again, turning its movement into a slow spin and twist too complex to match by eye. Wash needed the ship’s computers to plot a burn, but there was no time.
And his nose was bleeding again.
He grabbed the ship’s controls, took in a deep breath through his mouth, and dipped Serenity down toward the larger, older ship. He eased them closer, drifting, floating, and just as it looked as though they were going to strike its surface he whispered, “Jayne.”
Jayne teased the retros and they fired, so quickly and softly that there was no real trace or feel of them on the flight deck.
It worked. The movement of the Sun Tzu settled in their vision as Serenity matched its spin, and Wash allowed himself a brief, deep sigh.
“Mal, we’re close, and there’s an airlock…”
Kaylee was already on the scopes, scanning the ship’s surface and picking out what must have been an access point.
“Transmitting coordinates,” Kaylee said.
“Got ’em,” Mal replied. He sounded like he was running.
“Mal, something’s smashing through—” Zoë said.
“We’re minutes away,” Mal said.
“We’ll be there,” Wash said.
“Be ready to blast away on my order,” Mal said, and Wash frowned. Jayne looked over at him, and Kaylee froze with her hand on the console.
“Mal, once you’re on board we’ll—”
“If I tell you to go, you go, whether we’re on board or not,” Mal said.
“No,” Wash said.
“Yes!” Zoë said. “He’s coming, and if he gets us, that doesn’t mean you all have to die too.”
There was silence on the flight deck. Wash held their position, then drifted them along the ship toward the airlock they’d found.
“Just get here,” he said. “We’re ready.”
“And we’re a minute away,” Zoë said, the words a promise.
Jayne stood. “You need me here, Wash?”
“No, we’re good.”
“Then I’m going to the airlock. With a gun.”
“I’ll go with you,” Kaylee said. “You need looking after. You’ve been shot.”
“Nice of someone to notice,” Jayne said, and he offered Wash a wide grin as he left. It was a grin that said, However humped things get, we’re here together. Wash was grateful for it.
* * *
The whole ship was shaking. Great booms and thuds echoed all around them, and Mal wondered whether it was the sound of bulkheads failing behind them closer to the hull breach. If portions of the Sun Tzu were venting to space it would make Wash’s job even more problematic, but perhaps Silas would be blasted out into the void. Mal wouldn’t wish that on anyone, especially a victim of Alliance scientific meddling. He knew the pain and degradation River had gone through at their hands.
But if it was a choice between people he loved and Silas, well, that was no choice at all.
Another huge impact shook the ship, and they staggered and skidded into the wall to their right. River caught his gaze, wide-eyed.
“He’s still coming,” she said. “It’s not stopping him. I’m not sure anything can stop him.”
Mal pushed her ahead of him and helped Simon to his feet.
“We’re close,” Zoë said.
“He must be smashing his way through the doors,” Simon added.
Another explosion came from behind them, and the screaming blast of decompression began. River slipped and slid toward him, and Mal caught her outstretched hand, holding on to a door handle with the other. The handle was slick metal and his hand started to slip. He gripped River harder, causing her to cry out, but he was not about to let her go. He’d let go of the handle first, tumble back with her, and even though he knew it was more likely that she would be able to save him, still that loyalty was there. That was what being crew was about.
Zoë fell toward him and braced herself against the doorframe, feet planted either side of his hand. She looked at him, looked at his hand, and he nodded.
She pressed down on the handle with one foot, then fell against the door and knocked it open. As she did so, Mal dropped from the handle to the doorframe, and then Simon was by his side, stronger than he had ever seemed and more capable. He reached past Mal for his sister and clasped her wrist, and Mal understood where his strength came from. He had just saved his sister, and despite her strange power and the abilities she had been displaying more and more lately, he probably always would.
As Simon pulled, River reached up and grasped the doorframe, squeezing hard. She held Mal beneath one arm and heaved him into the open doorway, then climbed through and pulled Simon in after her, kicking the door closed behind her.
“He’s coming,” she said. “He’s close. He won’t stop. We should go that way.” She pointed to a door at the other side of the small room. It might once have been a store, but racking shelves had fallen, spilling dozens of plastic boxes to the floor. They contained bed sheets, hundreds of them folded and tied and never to provide warmth or comfort.
River pushed past a leaning shelf unit and kicked the door open. It was dark beyond, and Mal ducked through with her, plucking a torch from his suit pocket and shining it around. It appeared to be a service access, pipes and wire ducts lining the walls and ceiling. Several pipes had burst and a slick, sickly-smelling fluid dripped down and formed slippery puddles along the route.
“Careful,” he said.
“We don’t have time for careful,” River said. “We don’t have time for anything. He’s so close I can… So close he can almost hear…”
“River!” Simon said. He pushed past Mal and grabbed her, and River’s distant eyes focused on her brother.
“Through there,” she said, pointing at a gridwork of metal panels and props. “The airlock access. But we don’t have time.”
>
“Then we make time,” Zoë said, drawing her gun. Mal did the same. If Zoë was going to make a stand, he wouldn’t let her do so on her own.
* * *
We don’t have any time, she thinks, and River understands there and then that only she can save them. Her crew. Her friends.
Silas is almost upon them and he wants only her. He needs her to stay with him, and even though he is so much more advanced—his body strong, his mind expansive and filled with all the knowledge he has amassed while everyone believed he was asleep—his vision is blurred by his need for her. He cannot see that this ship is damaged and doomed. He doesn’t understand how much carnage and pain he has caused and will continue to cause, wherever and whenever they are together, until it’s only the two of them left.
River had believed she would welcome him, and to begin with she had. But now she feels so frightened being the focus of such a mind. It’s even more terrifying that, given time, she might become like that, and do the things he has done. And it’s this idea that she will fight and rage against the most, because she is still a human being, with friends and loved ones prepared to struggle and fight for her. No power is worth having if it means you end up on your own.
River goes at the wall of metal panels. She smashes her fist at one corner, plunges her hand through, and ignores the cuts on her hand and wrist as she grasps the metal and strains, focusing all her strength and finally pulling the panel away. Bracing against a metal prop with her other hand, she pulls at a second panel, then a third, feeling strength surging through her body and swallowing the stress and pain that rises in her muscles. Soon an opening large enough to crawl through is revealed.
I am saving us, she thinks, and she pushes her head through the hole and sees the space on the other side. The double sliding doors of an airlock stand open, the small space beyond both inviting and terrifying. One step through there and vacuum is all that awaits.
She pulls back to let the others go through first.
If he reaches them, it needs to be her that he meets.
* * *
We are no longer two, but one.
I cannot comprehend this, and the pain is so great that I’m sure it is killing me. Each time I breathe I remember us, not me. When I try to speak my voice is ours, not mine. We were never meant to be this way.
Yet I cannot give in because we would never want it that way. We came here with a purpose, and though that purpose has now changed—everything has changed—I will do my best to complete it.
From behind I hear the thuds, creaks, and explosions of decompression. Blast doors behind me have closed, and they’ll protect me from the violence of space, as well as from him. For a while, at least. If he decides to come for me, it’ll take some time for him to get through those doors.
I hope. Hope is all I can do, because what we thought we knew has proven to be very wrong. We came here comfortable in our knowledge and confident in our mission, and pride and confidence have been our downfall.
I run faster than I have ever run before. I hear echoes all around and think I can see us from the corners of my eyes, but when I pass polished surfaces I see only myself.
In time I reach the access tracks to the ship’s bridge. I have been here only once before—long ago, when we came to this place to leave Silas where we believed he could never rise again, never cause damage and pain, never be a danger to the whole ’verse— and the memories of that time are imprinted on my mind.
Accessing the pod controls is automatic. I step inside and the pod takes me across the wide gap to the globe-shaped bridge. It is independent from the rest of the ship, contained within the fuselage, surrounded by a void and held in place by vast columns and connecting structures, built this way for safety against disaster or, perhaps, attack. I remember the locking codes, and soon I am inside, the doors closing behind me. I disable the pod systems as best I can, just in case he reaches this far.
He’s going for her, I keep thinking, going for River Tam. The fear remains that he has already reached her, killed the others, and brought her back with him to finish me off. Combined, I don’t dare imagine what their powers might be. I underestimated him once. I never will again.
“Silas might know what we are doing,” I say, and I can almost hear our response. It’s a comfort. “We must be quick.”
I reach the ship pilot’s chair. It’s strange that a craft so massive and so important might have one single chair with one set of controls, but then I think back to who created this vessel, and I allow myself a small, brief sense of wonder.
Out of time, I shove the wonder aside and sit in the chair. The controls come alive at my touch.
They were good mechanics, those Earth-That-Was designers and builders.
“I wonder what they would think of what we’ve made of the ’verse?”
I close my eyes, and we face the end together.
“Suits on,” Mal said, and they pulled on their helmets, attached to their suits by cords and service cables. Mal sealed his helmet and hardly heard the small pulse that indicated all contacts and air supplies were in the green. If they weren’t, he’d have no time to attend to them.
River and Simon were already inside the airlock, pressed to the outside doors. It was small, but large enough for four of them to cram inside. It would be a different story on Serenity. With the ship moving it would be quicker and safer to use the airlock above and behind the observation window, and it would only take two of them at a time. That would be a problem for later.
The ship shook again, either from an impact or another decompression explosion. He’d seen this happening to big ships before, back during the war. Once a certain number of compartments went in a ship already battered and damaged, it often weakened the superstructure and started a chain reaction throughout the vessel. No matter how strong the blast doors and secure bulkheads, the pressures and stresses of explosive decompressions could put a weakness into the ship that winnowed through its core.
He went to enter the airlock, then saw Zoë looking at him wide-eyed.
“Zoë?”
She held up a tube, torn at the end. It was her air supply from the suit into her helmet.
“Put it on,” Mal said.
“But—”
“No time!” he said. “Helmet on!” He shoved her into the airlock and followed, standing facing the double sliding doors with his gun in one hand. As he pressed the control panel, an explosion nearby warped and then burst the whole wall of the corridor. Debris fell and bounced, but the expected roar of decompression did not come.
Silas stepped through the ragged hole in the wall. He was bloodied, battered, his loose clothing torn, a terrible wound on his scalp dripping blood down his face, but his eyes were as wide and mad as his grin.
“Stay with me,” Silas said to River.
“I don’t want to be like you,” River said. “I want to be like me.” His smiled dropped, his eyes grew narrow and filled with rage, and he came at them.
Mal slammed the control panel and the doors slid shut.
Almost.
Silas’s fingers were trapped between the doors. They tensed, curled, and pulled, and the doors started to creak open, fighting and straining against their motors.
Zoë and Simon bashed at his fingers. Mal aimed his gun at the man’s fingers, but if he fired in here a ricochet could kill any one of them, and the gap between the doors was not big enough to shoot through, and—
River touched the controls and the doors slid open.
Mal fired once, his bullet striking Silas’s left shoulder. He shrugged, took half a step back, and came at them again.
River kicked him, hard, sending him sprawling back into the wreckage of the corridor. Then she slammed the controls and the doors slid all the way shut. Without pause, without taking a breath, without warning, she hit the Purge button.
Instead of the pressure being gradually lowered and the atmosphere bled out, the doors behind them slid open, and the resultant venting of
air carried them out of the Sun Tzu and into vacuum.
They drifted away from the ship, somehow managing to keep together. Back in the airlock Mal saw movement at the small viewing window.
Scratching at the toughened glass, eyes wide and furious and hungry, Silas was watching them.
Watching her.
Mal felt pressure on his arm, and saw that Zoë was clasping on. He took three deep breaths, then disconnected his air supply and locked it into her helmet’s ingress port. She blinked her thanks and took several deep breaths. When she nodded he plugged the air back into his port.
We can’t do this for long, he thought.
“Wash, we could do with a little help here—”
“Way ahead of you, Mal,” Wash said.
A shadow fell over them, and Mal used a burst of air from his suit controls to spin them around.
Serenity floated behind them, and in a few seconds he reached out and grabbed hold of the hull. The others did the same. Simon disconnected his air supply tube and shared with Zoë, then River was crawling up across the top of the ship toward the airlock.
“Two at a time,” Mal said. “River and Zoë first.”
They all knew there was no time for arguing. As River pulled herself into the airlock and Zoë hauled herself in behind, the outer door slid shut, and Mal and Simon were left grasping on to handholds on Serenity’s outer hull.
Mal found a strange peace in the silence, even though they hung so close to chaos. The Sun Tzu was in a spin, and somehow Wash had managed to replicate the motion and keep Serenity in the same spot relative to the ship. Mal felt Serenity shuddering every few seconds beneath his hands, and he saw occasional puffs from her stabilizing retros as Wash kept adjusting her movements. Beyond Serenity, beyond the Sun Tzu, the view turned and twisted, alternating between planet, rings, and deep space.
Just a few more seconds, he thought. Just a few breaths and we’ll be back home.
Simon grabbed his arm and pointed.
Back along the Sun Tzu, a great glare burst from its stern.
* * *
“What’s happening?” Kaylee shouted.
“Nothing good,” Wash said. “Nothing good at all. The Sun Tzu’s firing up, and we’re way, way too close.”