In the third part of FIREFLY: CHANGING COURSE, several crew members deal with what it means to navigate in places they’ve never been, and River’s hacking skills could force the crew to chart a course back to a place that’s never been lucky for them in the past.

This is a fan fiction set in the Firefly/Serenity universe created by Joss Whedon. It takes place after the events in the television series and the companion motion picture that followed, and is also the third part of a sequel to Firefly: Double Booked, which was in turn a sequel to Firefly: Connecting Flight. This means it might have SPOILERS, folks, and major ones at that. So please don't read this unless you get the chance to see the series and the movie -- and read my first two Firefly stories.

It was dead silent in the Captain’s cabin, except for the occasional clicking and beeping of his terminal. After a while, Inara looked up from the screen. Mal looked back from where he sat on his bunk, and his raised eyebrow held the question he couldn’t bring himself to ask.

“River wasn't lying,” she said softly, looking at her man and wondering why he was so quiet. “If anything, she may have been underestimating how much she took.”

“I’m still not seein’ how it happened.” He rose to his feet and paced across the small space. “How could she get so gorram much? It's just a little moon.”

“It was an Alliance black ops moon, Mal. They built themselves an entire colony, funded with money no one knew existed. They terraformed an entire moon, just to test an airborne form of targeted mind control. Do you know how much that must have cost? And it was just the beginning. They built entire cities, like Persephone in miniature. Linda said the air traffic control systems they were using were way more than a little city like Hustler would need. If the Alliance gave a little moon like Flynt something like that, why not a planetary treasury to go with it?”

“She said she didn’t take it all.”

“You’re right, she didn’t. She was smart, and left more than enough behind to cover us taking anything at all.” Inara tapped the screen. “But the treasury wasn’t her only source. Flynt was full of wealthy and influential men, convinced to move to the middle of nowhere with the promise of a huge estate and an army of personal sex slaves. They came … and they brought access to their money with them.”

“So she also pulled millions from the accounts of each of those wealthy ‘citizens’ and sent it off on the Cortex along with the treasury money ... into thousands of untraceable numbered accounts all over the Alliance.”

“That much? Without leavin' a trail?”

Inara nodded. “River erased all the evidence of her transactions, at least as far as I can tell. She's very, very good, but that isn't a surprise. She was a genius before the Alliance got their hands on her. According to Simon, she's gifted, which means she gets very, very good at anything she puts her mind to.”

“So you're tellin' me … everything’s shiny?

“As far as I can tell, yes,” she replied. “For now. We’re going to have to find a way to make that money usable, but between River’s skills and my Companion training, we should be able to do it.”

“So we're living high, and no one’s the wiser.” He sat back down on his bunk and stared into space. “Huh.”

After a moment, Inara rose and walked over to sit beside him. “For the first time in a long time, we’re in the black in more ways than one,” she said.

Inara looked at him, seeing a tension she couldn't understand.

“What's wrong, Mal? This is good ... isn't it?”

He smiled, but there was little joy in it. “Looks like, but I just don’t know. Is it? Any time it seems like the Verse has cut us a break, it’s usually just settin’ us up to be slapped down hard.”

“There’s more to it, though, isn't there?”

The Captain nodded. “We’ve come more than a little ways from the bobble-headed dolls job, 'Nara. And maybe the air in these parts is a little too thin for my taste.”

He sighed, and Inara took his hand.

“Truth be told, I’m not sure what I’m supposed t’ do now. You and River say we’re all fùyù now, and everyone thinks that’s shiny. But you know me. I’m not the kinda man who does well not doin’ anything. With that much money lyin’ around, any job is make-work, and I don’t want to go through life pretendin’ I’m doin’ somethin’.”

“You won’t have to, Mal.” She looks down for a moment, then gives his hand a squeeze. “Tell me, what exactly are you thinking of doing with all that money?

“I'm not sure what to do, 'Nara. It's not like I enjoyed living on the raggedy edge, but you've got to admit it was an interestin' neighborhood, most of the time.”

He looked at her, and she could see the confusion in his eyes. “And I’ve seen what havin’ that kind of bank balance does to other men, and women. They turn into the kind of folks I’d just as soon not be, and that’s a fact.”

He shrugged. “So I ain't got the first idea what I’m gonna do. If you do, I'm hopin' you'll let me in on it.”

Inara smiled, and hugged him gently. “It’s not as bad as you think it is, Mal. I think you need to see wealth differently.”

He smiled and returned her hug, giving her forehead a soft kiss. “Not about to argue with you, ‘Nara. We both know this won’t be the first time you schooled me. Pretty sure it won’t be the last.”

“First, you need to see that money doesn’t have any kind of evil power. It doesn’t turn people into monsters. It just makes it easier for them to become monsters if that’s the kind of folks they are … or if they don’t see the danger. People like Niska – or Magistrate Higgins, or even Atherton Wing – they see money as a way to gain and hold power over others, because that’s who they are inside.”

The Captain nodded. “Right enough.”

“But then there are people like Sir Warwick Harrow,” she continued. “He may have wanted to hire someone to smuggle his cattle, true. But he was also a good man. He wouldn’t do business with Badger, because he knew Badger was … what did he call him?”

“A psychotic lowlife.” Mal grinned. “Nice turn of phrase, that. And true, in so many ways.”

She nodded. “But when Harrow saw the way you dealt with Atherton, he saw the good in you, too. He realized you might be a man of honor, despite your … association with Badger. He saw you as someone he could trust.”

Inara turned slightly and looked up at her man. “I’m going to ask you something now, and I want you to be totally honest. No hiding behind the man you used to want people to think you were.”

It was Mal’s turn to nod, although he hesitated for a few seconds before he agreed.

“Suppose we didn’t have this money,” she said slowly, “and two jobs came your way at exactly the same time. The first one paid more, but didn’t do anybody a lick of good. Just moving cargo, that’s all. The second job paid quite a bit less, but it got food and medicine to a colony out on the raggedy edge of the Rim. Which one would you choose?”

When the Captain hesitated again, she squeezed his hand. “Honestly, Mal … which job?”

He sighed. “The second one.”

“See? Money doesn’t have any hold over you. It never has. Because you are a good man. When you lost in Serenity Valley, it hurt you so much that you ran away from the man you were when you fought there. But Malcolm Reynolds always was – and still is – a determined cuss, and he chased you for years until the family you found here on this ship made you realize you couldn’t run anymore.”

She put her head on his shoulder. “You are who you are. Wealth isn’t going to change that. It’s just going to make it easier for you to do good … to be the good man you already are. You just need to figure out what you want to do to make the Verse a better place – and how you can put that money to work to help you get what you want.”

“Oh, is that all?” Mal smiled and kissed the top of her head. “You make it sound so easy.”

“You don’t have to do it alone, sah gwah. You know I’ll help.”

He held her close and buried his face in her hair. “I think you already have.”

Wash lay on her side, naked under a single sheet, and watched Jayne sleep.

‘Here I am, in a place I never thought I’d be, watching a man I never thought I could ever love snore,’ she thought, smiling. ‘In bed with Jayne. The Verse is truly a place of wonders. Either that, or the gods have a wicked sense of humor.’

She sighed softly, thinking about the many times the two of them had slowly pleasured each other during the night. She had aches and pains in places she never thought she’d ever have, and a taste in her mouth that reminded her of some of the things she had done for her man that she never imagined she would. But she remembered too how it felt for her to make him moan like that — and some of the things he did to make her scream.

‘So that’s what it felt like for Zoe, in the time that was.’ Wash pushed a loose strand of hair out of her face. ‘I won’t deny I was curious sometimes, about what it felt like for her, but I never imagined I’d ever really know.’

Parts of her wanted to slip out of bed, brush her teeth, and clean up a little bit. Being a woman was a whole lot messier than being a guy when it came to what came after making love, and both Wash and the Linda-That-Was felt like they’d rather wake Jayne up after they cleaned up a bit.

But when she began to slip out of bed, Jayne’s hand came over and rested on her hip with a small squeeze.

“Where you goin’, woman?” he muttered, his face half covered with his pillow.

“Want to clean myself up a bit is all,” Linda replied, slipping into a half imitation of Jayne’s twang. “Can’t blame a girl for wanting to be all fresh for her man, can you?”

Jayne pulled her to him and rolled into her, then kissed her hard while his arms wrapped around her tight.

“Your man is happy with his girl just the way she is, and that’s a fact.” He rolled onto his back and pulled her on top of him. “Fresh is nice and all, but the way you are right now reminds me of all the fun things we did last night.”

He moved his mouth to an inch away from her ear, and whispered, “And if you clean up and we wind up doin' all those things again before you go off to fly some more, you’re just gonna get all messy again.”

Wash grinned and pulled back enough to look into Jayne’s eyes.

“Oh, I see,” she purred, feeling him getting hard under her. “Juss bein’ practical, Mister Cobb?”

“Sure enough, Miss Wehr.” He smiled at her, and she could see the love and playfulness in his face. “What the doc would call ‘fective time management,’ don’t ya agree?”

“Oh yes, I do!” She arched her back, then reached down under her and slid him inside her with a twitch and a roll of her hips. “Maybe we’d best stop wasting time then.”

“I do love the way you think, missy.”

“Well, I love the way you feel, mister.”

“Really? How ‘bout this?”

She laughed, and he kissed her, and in the end, no time was wasted at all.

The crew met on the flight deck, because it was supposedly Linda’s first time back at the controls, and she didn’t want to leave Serenity to fend for herself for a while.

’Yup,’ Zoe thought with a smile as she watched the pilot checking everything. ‘That’s my man in there still.’

Then she watched as Jayne moved behind her and gave her shoulder a squeeze, and she saw the look that passed over Wash’s face before her eyes closed for an instant. Zoe sighed.

‘Looks like she’s as much Linda as she is Wash now, and that difference is getting harder and harder to see. I’m going to have to get used to my man not being my man anymore.’

“Okay, everybody, here’s how it is.” Mal stood up by the forward console. “Inara says River moved a lot of cash, maybe more than she thought she had. What we need to do now is figure out a way to make it all look legit, and ‘Nara thinks that means we need to head into the Core.”

“Makes sense,” Simon said from the flight deck door, Kaylee leaning back into him. “A lot of financial requests coming in from the Rim could get flagged.”

“They didn’t last time.” River spoke from her position in the ceiling above Wash’s station. “I was careful.”

“Yes, you were, mei mei,” the doctor replied, “but if we want things to go smooth when it comes to hiding all those credits in plain sight, being in the Core will give us less lag time for a large series of transactions.”

“Simon is right,” Inara said from her position next to Mal. “But more than this, we need someone to actually go down to either Sihnon or Londinum and set up a corporation in person, before we start moving the currency. They’re where the major exchanges are located, and either one would be a good place for us to incorporate when it comes to taxes.”

“Londinum is more conservative, and tends towards investors who want long-term growth possibilities.” River lowered herself to the deck, the exertion not affecting her speech at all. “While Sihnon is where risk-takers are likely to invest. So are we privately held turtles waiting out the end of the Verse, or are we privately funded venture capitalists out to change things and make a profit doing it?”

“That question alone raises another one,” Zoe said, leaning against the wall. “And this one is more important. Just what are we planning to do with all this money? Londinum makes more sense than Sihnon if we’re gonna live off the creds from the investment, but it seems a mite strange to start a corporation at all if we’re just going to split it up and go our separate ways.”

“The idea is to protect the money first by putting it somewhere that automatically makes it legitimate.” Inara took Mal’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “As the investment capital of a potential money-making enterprise, the credits will no longer exist as stolen currency. They will be real in the eyes of the Alliance, so if they ever come looking for what was taken, they won’t find it here.”

“As for what we’re planning to do once we’ve covered our tracks?” Mal looked down for a second, then squared his shoulders and raised his head. “I’ve got some ideas of what I want to do with the cash, or at least my share, but I don’t want to keep any of you from leaving if that’s what you want to do. I’ll wish you well if you go. After all, the Verse ain’t the safest place for us on this boat, and maybe finding a shiny hole somewhere to hide in might be appealing after running for so long.”

“But seems to me after all we’ve been through together that we’re a lot more than just a crew, and I sure enough don’t want to lose that. We’re stronger together than we are apart, and there are a lot of things we can do to make a difference in the Verse, if you’re willing to stay. For now, let’s just keep the creds away from the Alliance, and we’ll figure the rest out later. Makes sense?”

There was a small silence, and everyone nodded.

“The key to setting up this corporation is to give each of us a second identity.” Inara rose and stepped over to one of the side displays on the flight deck. Touching the screen, alternate bios for each of them came up, changing every few seconds. “These shadow people will serve as the investors for the corporation. Either exchange will hold their identities secret, after confirming that the investors are in fact real.”

“Why would they do that?” Kaylee looked confused. “That doesn’t sound like something the feds would like too much, seein’ as how they’re all about being in other people’s business.”

River grinned. “They don’t like it, jei mei, not at all But the megacorps that funded the exodus from Earth That Was made some conditions when it came to how things were going to work once we got here. Business is business, and the feds understand that they don’t get to see every business dealing free and clear. When senators can be bought and sold by Blue Sun or some other system-wide company, it’s a safe bet that’s not going to change much.”

Jayne spoke up for the first time. “So how are we going to make these ‘shadow people’ real?”

“Once we’re in the Core, I’ll put them into official records the same way I created alternate registry IDs for Serenity.” River smiled. “I already created them, based on our physical descriptions and the records of some of the oldest families in the Alliance.”

“Wait — we’re all going to be shareholder descendants?” Simon shook his head. “How? They’re the most documented people in the Alliance! New ones can’t just show up out of thin air.”

“Not from the branches of the family on the Core worlds, big brother. But every Founding family has its black sheep. There were branches that disagreed with the decisions made by the Founders when we arrived here. They broke away from their families and went their separate ways. I just tracked down the ones that nobody cares much about anymore and …added a few leaves.”

“So instead of the line ending where it used to, it continues with one of our shadow identities,” Inara said, returned to Mal’s side. “No one will dare question how any branch of one of the Founding Families has this kind of money to invest in a new opportunity.”

“And they really don’t care what that opportunity is?” Zoe sounded doubtful.

“It isn’t their business to care,” River replied. “In fact, their charters explicitly prohibit being involved in any way once a corporation is registered. They are supposed to remain completely impartial. No advice. No warnings. Just provide notification of the existence of the corporation, plus secrecy and security concerning its actions.”

“So, what next, Cap’n?” Kaylee looked at Mal.

“We find ourselves a place to fuel up, then head into the Core,” he replied, then stood up and headed for the flight deck door with Inara close behind. When he reached the door, he stopped and turned.

“And Kaylee? When we get to a supply depot, see if they’ve got any sound insulation we can use.” He looked at Jayne and Linda, and smiled, just a little. “Things have been a mite noisy in the crew quarters lately, and the rest of us need to sleep once in a while, dohn mah?”

He turned to go, and Inara looked back in apology as Linda’s cheeks burned red. Then she followed after him and punched him in the shoulder.

“Mal! Behave!”

As their voices moved down the corridor, Mal replied, “Maybe someone should tell them that, ‘Nara. They’re louder than Kaylee and the Doc, and that’s a fact.”

Zoe looked over at Jayne and Linda and smiled. Linda began fiddling with the controls, blushing even harder, while Kaylee grinned and Simon sighed.

NOTE: Sorry it took so long, Browncoats! This is what happens when you have way too many ideas and too few minutes in a day, for WAY too many days in a row. – Randalynn