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 first part of a sequel to Firefly: Double Booked, which was in turn a sequel to Firefly: Connecting Flight. This means it has 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.
In the first part of FIREFLY: CHANGING COURSE, Wash thinks about where she came from and what she's going to do now, and gets advice from an unexpected source.
Wash sat in the pilot’s chair, the one place where thinking had always come easily. That part of who she was hadn’t changed, unlike most of the rest of her. Still, a lot had changed since the untimely death of the man she used to be in that very same chair, and her unusual resurrection in the pleasingly-shaped and quite female body of Linda Rachel Wehr, the woman who replaced him as Serenity’s pilot.
Of course, she wasn’t actually on flight duty at the moment. After she had pushed herself so hard keeping the ship in the air during a rescue attempt a few hours back, she wound up fainting at the controls. The ship’s Doctor had forbidden her to fly for 24 hours, or anything else particularly strenuous. Keeping her out of the cockpit for a day wasn’t really a problem, though. When Serenity was out in the Black, between the planets and moons that made up the system, she could usually find her way without help.
So Wash wasn’t really flying, just curled up in the chair, her chair, staring out at the stars. And thinking. About Jayne.
‘I told him I loved him,’ she thought, still a little amazed at both her declaration and the fact that she actually DID love him. ‘And I kissed him and he touched me and ... sometime soon I’m going to climb into bed with him and I can’t believe I’m looking forward to that, too. I mean, Jayne? I thought the Verse was strange with the geese juggling and all, but seriously ... me ... and Jayne?’
She smiled just a little, thinking about the conversation she wasn’t supposed to have heard between Simon and Jayne.
“Oh, come on, Doc,” the mercenary said, doing his best to keep his voice down with Linda in the next room. “It ain’t like I’m gonna be chasin’ her around the ship or nothin’. We’re gonna be in my bunk ... or her bunk ... or somewhere else ... oh, hell, I don’t know, but I ain’t gonna hurt her. I’d never hurt her. You know that!”
Simon looked at Jayne, and he could see how being this close to actually being with Linda was ripping him up inside. Still, she’d just burned through so much energy hovering over Hustler, it was a wonder she was awake now at all. As much as he understood how Jayne was feeling, his patient always came first.
“Jayne ... I know you just want to be with her, and make her happy,” he said softly. “But she’s been through a lot, and she’s weaker than she should be.” Simon leaned forward. “If you two ... get together tonight, Linda is going to crash so hard afterwards that she’ll be back in my care before morning. Do you really want your first time together to wind up keeping her in bed a few more days ... without you?”
Jayne looked down and shook his head. “You know I don’t.”
“Okay, then.” The doctor said. He put his hand on Jayne’s shoulder, and the other man looked up. “It’s just for one night. She needs rest more than anything else. And tomorrow, I’ll examine her again, and certify her fit for light duty ... along with any other after-hours activities she might want to engage in. All right?”
The mercenary nodded, then sighed. “I reckon it’ll have to be. You’re sure she’ll be okay?”
Simon smiled. “A little sore in the shoulders, but nothing a little massage therapy couldn’t fix. Linda would like that.”
“Massage?”
“Yes, massage. Muscle manipulation.”
“I know what a massage is, Doc,” Jayne growled, then looked away, his face red. “If she needs it, I’ll do it. I just ain’t never done it to anybody before, so I don’t know what all I’m supposed to do.”
Inside, the doctor sighed, but he knew this was all unfamiliar territory for Jayne. “Go see Inara, and she’ll teach you a few things to get you started. For now, go kiss her goodnight and tell her you’ll see her in the morning. Dohn-ma?”
“Dohn-ma.” Jayne looked back through the window, and saw Linda watching them. She smiled, and he smiled back before a thought occurred to him. “She ... uh, she can’t hear us out here, can she?”
Simon shook his head. “Doubtful. Med bay is pretty well insulated sound-wise.”
“Okay, then. She and I, we danced this long. I reckon we can hold off ‘til it’s right.” He said, almost to himself. “Got to take care of her. Gotta keep her safe.”
She couldn’t hear that last part, but she could read his lips through the glass. And remembering what he said hours later, after she’d slept a while, made her smile all over again.
‘I can’t believe the idea of him taking care of me makes me feel so ... special.’ She shook her head and looked down at her body. ‘Okay, granted ... I’m not the me I used to be, but still ...’
“You’re disobeying Doctor’s orders, you know.”
Zoe spoke from the doorway, and her voice had that little deep-throated purr that used to drive Wash wild in the middle of the night. The pilot looked back over her shoulder, saw the first mate’s smile, and shook her head.
“Ma’am, no Ma’am,” she replied, answering Zoe’s smile with one of her own. “I may be good, but even I’m not good enough to fly this ship without touching the wheel.”
“Still, shouldn’t you be in med bay?” Zoe was in a long silk bathrobe Wash had given her as a gift after a particularly successful job. The pilot was happy to see her wearing it.
I’m supposed to rest.” Linda shrugged. “Here’s as good a place as med bay. Better, because ... well, it’s my place. You know?”
The first mate took a step onto the flight deck before she stopped and cocked her head.
“May I join you?”
“Of course!” Linda waved a hand towards the second seat. “Glad for the company.”
“Ah, I see,” Zoe said, moving to the co-pilot’s chair and settling in with a sigh. “Is that why you’ve been sitting here all alone? Because you know this is the most highly-traveled part of the ship in the middle of the night, and you were waiting for someone to come along and say hi?”
“Something like that.” Linda hugged her knees and stared out into the Black. “I had some thinking to do, and for me, this has always been the best place to think. After all, when you’re surrounded by the Verse, you tend to put things in perspective.”
“My husband used to say much the same thing.” Zoe looked out at the stars. “Hard to see any problem as too big to solve against a backdrop like that.”
She looked back at Linda. “Let me guess ... Jayne?”
The pilot shook her head slightly and gave her ex-wife a shy smile. “Got it in one.”
Zoe smiled back. “Must admit I was surprised my own self, after how he treated you when you came on board the first time.”
Linda looked out at the stars again.
“I never expected ...” She stopped and began again. “It turns out there was so much more to him than I thought at first. I mean, I know he has a family, gods know where. He must have grown up knowing what it meant to be close to someone. But somehow he’d lost it along the way. Now suddenly, he gets it. He’s human again. He’s part of this family.”
She looked over at Zoe. “I suppose, being part of this crew, even Jayne would have to get it eventually.”
The first mate shook her head.
“Not so much,” she replied. “He was learning, but it was slow going. And letting down those walls of his was always too risky for someone who’s lived a life like the one Jayne lived. No, he did it because he finally found someone he cares about more than he cares about himself. You.”
Wash turned to look at her, thinking this was one odd conversation to be having with the woman who used to be her wife. Zoe met her eyes and she smiled, just a little.
“Love is a funny thing. When I first met my husband, I couldn’t stand him. I saw this funny little man with a big bushy moustache, wearing loud shirts and flight suits and talking a mile a minute. He could fly, not doubt about it, but for some reason, he’d run at the mouth whenever he tried to talk to me. There was something ... not right about him, and it took me a while to realize what it was.”
“He was trying to impress you, but he couldn’t figure out how.” Wash smiled slowly, remembering how frustrating it had been.
Zoe saw something in Linda’s eyes — something warm, a memory ... and a flash of something familiar. She nodded.
“I remember the first time we had a real conversation, he and I. It was the middle of the night, ship’s time, and he was sitting just where you’re sitting now, staring out at the black. I stood in the doorway and watched him for a while, and the expression on his face was priceless. I started to back away, not wanting to disturb him, and he spoke, his eyes never leaving the sky.”
“‘Where I grew up,’ he said, in a tone I’d never heard before, ‘the air was so thick above us that we could never see the sky. I’d heard about stars, of course. Seen pictures of ‘em ever since I was small. But when I got old enough, I went up on a suborbital freighter run with my uncle. When we broke atmo, the Verse appeared, and it was everything I could have wanted, hoped for ... wished for. The stars were so sharp and the spaces between so empty, I felt it all call to me like nothing had ever called to me before. That’s when I decided to be a pilot, and live out here in the black, surrounded by beauty.’”
“Then Wash turned to me, and looked into my eyes and said, ‘Then I found this ship, and I found you, and you were more beautiful than the whole Verse to me. I’ve tried so hard since I came aboard to make you see me. I don’t know what to say to make you see how I feel. But I know now that a million words won’t touch you the way I want to touch you, or show you how much I love you. So I look at the stars and the space between, and wish I could get you to look at me the same way. But I really don’t think I can.’”
“You remember all that?”
Zoe looked at Linda, and there were tears in her eyes. “Word for word. I fell in love with him right then. He stopped acting and let me see him. No more words, just emotions. And it was only a matter of time until we were married. After all, that’s what happens when someone loves you that much.”
Linda felt the tears in her own eyes begin to make their way down her cheeks.
“That’s what Jayne did,” she said softly. “He took down his walls. He handed me his heart and said, ‘I can’t stop myself from loving you. This is me. Love me or don’t, but just know I love you, and I’m not going to stop.’ When I saw that, something in me broke open, and I realized that ... that I loved him, too.”
The two women were silent, sharing the moment, then Zoe spoke.
“So what’s the problem, then?”
Wash looked over at the woman she had loved more than life itself, and let her see the confusion in her face.
“I’ve never loved a man before.” Zoe’s eyes closed, and she took a breath. Then she reached over and put her hand on Linda’s and squeezed.
“But you have loved.” It was a statement, not a question, and the pilot nodded
“There was a woman,” she whispered. “She was smart, and beautiful, and sexy, and I loved her so much. She was everything I ever wanted, and she loved me too, more than words could say. But death ripped us apart. And now here I am, months later ... and I love this ... this man. It feels so right, but at the same time it feels wrong. Part of it feels like I’m betraying her somehow. And part of it is ... I’ve never felt this way about a man before. How do I love a man? How can I?”
Zoe bowed her head, then raised it again.
“You’re not loving a man. You’re loving Jayne. That’s what love is, Linda. It’s about the person, and how you feel about them. How they make you feel, and how you make them feel. Damn, girl, how does he make you feel when he touches you?”
All the tension leaves Linda’s face, replaced by a simple joy that answers Zoe’s question without her saying a word. Zoe reaches out and touches Linda’s cheek.
“See? You do the same thing to him, when you touch him. You make him happy beyond words. You make his world complete. That’s how you love him. Just by being ... his.”
“And ... sex?”
“I’m not thinking that’s a problem, honey,” Zoe said, smiling again. “I think Jayne’s been around long enough to know what to do with a woman once she’s in his bed. And I think you’ll be able to think of things to do to make it worth his while to keep you there.”
Wash blushed and looked down, a little embarrassed about talking like this with the woman she used to keep happy, back when her bed was their bed. She noticed a kind of twitching on the mass detector. It was barely a flicker on the display, jumping back and forth a hundredth of a percent, but they were way out in the middle of the middle of the Black, and there wasn’t a planet or asteroid anywhere near them.
She watched as the ship’s course began to change, just a few hundredths of a degree off at first, but then it started increasing, and the flickering on the display became a solid indication of something nearby, even though she still couldn’t see a thing.
Letting go of Zoe’s hand, she linked the mass detector with the nav computer and let them talk about where the heck that mass reading was coming from. The nav computer said it was straight ahead, but when Wash looked, there was nothing there but black ... just a hole between stars ... black ... hole.
Black hole. She felt her insides twist, and her blood ran cold. A quantum black hole.
The best way to stay unnoticed in a crowded universe is go places other ships don’t. So it stands to reason you would run into things other folks wouldn’t, usually. Like something way too small to see that eats anything in its path and keeps on eating until there’s nothing left to eat.
And if anyone else did run into a quantum black hole out here, it would eat their ship and everything in it long before they could ever find a port.
‘Just like it will eat Serenity,’ Wash thought, ‘and everybody aboard her.’
The proximity alarm finally sounded as the black hole’s pull increased enough, but the pilot was already kicking in everything the ship had.
“Wang Ba Dan.” she swore, wrestling with the control yoke.
“What’s wrong?” The first mate tried to stand up.
“No!” Linda shouted. “Strap in. It’s a black hole.”
Zoe dropped back into the co-pilot’s chair, and buckled the harness.
“If we don’t avoid it,” the pilot said through gritted teeth, “there won’t be anything left of this ship but a memory.”
As hard as Wash flew, all she could manage was an orbital stand-off at full burn. Serenity and the black hole went around and around each other, over and over, with each orbit bringing the singularity closer and closer to touching the hull.
Her mind raced, wondering what she could possibly do to stop this from happening, but they’d never covered this in flight school —— not even in his extra lessons with Chiang.
Chiang. The man who taught him the one thing that kept them all alive when Serenity’s electronics were fried on the approach to Mr. Universe's moon.
"Consider the leaf on the wind,"he said softly. "It does not think, or feel, or believe. It simply is. It dips, it soars . . . it flies, but only as the winds and gravity command. But if the leaf could think, could feel . . . could believe . . . it could also choose not to do what nature demanded. It could soar when the wind said to dip, or drift when there is no wind at all." His eyes found Wash's and held them, and the pilot could've sworn they flashed with a green fire that came from within. "Mister Washburne, the belief of a determined individual can be stronger than all that is, if only his will is strong enough."
‘What,’ she thought with a growl, ‘I’m supposed to just change the laws of physics ... on a whim?’’
The Chiang in her memory turned to face her, and spoke.
‘Why not? I did, when you saw me floating on air when we first met. You did, too, when you saved your ship and crew on approach to that moon.’
‘In case you’ve forgotten, old man, I died on that moon!’
Chiang’s face was stern. ‘In case you’ve forgotten, young woman, this is why you’re here.’
Then the scene changed, and she remembered her conversation with Chiang in that bar on Santo, all those weeks ago, about why she needed to come back to the Verse as Linda.
'But why a she?’ Wash had asked, confused. ‘Why her? Admittedly I wasn't always a finalist in the Mister Testosterone contest, but still --"
'Because she is our only chance. Our last chance.' Chiang's voice was cool, and Wash heard something there he didn't expect. Worry. 'Because Mal has places to be, and Linda is the last candidate under consideration before he gives up for now and leaves River at the controls. And if you're not there to save them in the next few months, another chance will never come. Serenity and her crew will die in deep space, alone and unremembered -- unless you're behind the stick. Unless you are their pilot.'
Back on the flight deck, Linda’s eyes widened.
“Wuh duh ma huh tah duh fong kwong duh wai shung!” she screamed aloud. “That’s NOW?”
Panicking, she scanned the control systems, looking for something, anything that could help. But after a few seconds, she realized the measurements and the instruments themselves wouldn’t help her at all. Even the forces they measured were all firmly rooted in the here and now, in the science that humans knew and understood.
Where Chiang wanted her to go was somewhere else -- into the mystical. It was the stuff science laughed at, the concepts that couldn’t be verified by experiments or quantified by technology. He wanted Wash to accept the stuff dreams were made of — the things you took on faith.
He wanted her to do the impossible.
‘Okay, FINE,’ she thought, putting every ounce of sarcasm she could into her mental voice. ‘I’ll DO the impossible. But if this doesn’t work, Gladys, I’m never speaking to you again!’
After a few seconds, she shook her head. ‘When letting us all die starts sounding like a win-win, it’s clear I left sanity a few hundred klicks behind. Time to embrace the madness.’
“So, I can do the impossible?” Linda muttered aloud, her mind racing. “Fine. How do I make a black hole go away? If I try to run, no matter how fast I can make the ship go, it’s just going to follow us and eat Serenity from behind. Make us really dense, like neutron star dense? That would just make us more attractive to the gorram thing.”
“Wait. So if I make the ship less dense ...” She chewed her lower lip, then shook her head. “No, no, that would slow it down some, but it would still ... well, it would still know we’re here, and it wouldn’t stop coming. How can I make it just ignore us completely? Can I make Serenity ... not exist for long enough for it to ... lose interest?”
Wash suddenly realized she was waiting for a response, and almost snorted. Who was going to answer her? Chiang? As if. She knew better than to expect anything remotely like direct assistance from the ghostly guru. Still, it was the best idea she had, as totally off-the-wall as it was, and she knew that she only had seconds to make it happen.
Linda locked the wheel on auto-pilot and sat back, closing her eyes but keeping her hands on the control yoke. She reached out with her mind through her hands and touched every part of the ship, surprised at how easy it was to do. She felt that oneness every pilot feels when she and her ship have been together as long as Wash and Serenity had been. With the smallest effort, she made the connection even stronger, until she could feel the ship as if it was part of her.
At the same time, Wash could feel the concentrated pocket of emptiness that kept chasing her in ever-closing circles, and wondered just for an instant if what she was doing was suicide. Then she remembered that if she didn’t do something, they were all dead anyway.
So she focused everything she had on remembering what she had learned, and what had happened in the sky over Mr. Universe's moon, and started whispering.
“I am a leaf on the wind ... watch how I soar ...” She felt the ship start to thin around her ...
“I am a leaf on the wind ... watch how I soar ...” Her own body began to lose its mass ...
“I am a leaf on the wind ... watch how I soar ...” She started seeing the stars through the control panel and the side of the ship.
Suddenly, with a sharp flickering of everything, Serenity simply stopped –
– and ceased to be.
Wash balanced the ship’s very existence on the knife’s edge between here and gone. Hovering in the thin almost nothingness that makes up the place where Schrodinger’s cat both lives and dies, she feels an immense something that was also about the size of a grain of sand move through the cockpit at speeds beyond imagining. The Verse seemed to vibrate all around her, making a noise like a perfect chime that went on and on and on, and Wash felt the black hole tug at her consciousness as it passed through where the ship was/might have been. It almost as if Wash’s soul was the only thing for light years around that could be touched by its passing.
Which, of course, it was.
The black hole moved through and past the where-when Serenity used to inhabit, then shot off into the Black to find something else to feed its terrible hunger.
Wash sighed, and her concentration wavered just for an instant, and with another odd flicker of inexplicable otherness, the ship –
– came back.
With a few well-practiced motions, Wash slammed Serenity into a hard burn that pushed her back into her seat. She wanted to get as far away from that gorram ship-killer as she could. Almost immediately, the proximity alert went quiet, and she watched the mass detector as the black hole faded into the space behind her until it was nothing but a memory.
“Damn,” she whispered softly. “I really am a leaf on the wind.”
There was a prolonged squee from just beyond the cockpit door, and the pilot suddenly found herself wrapped in a huge hug from behind.
“Hoe-bann,” River said as she squeezed the pilot tight. “That was so shiny! You made the ship just ... go away! You have so got to teach me!”
“I won’t get the chance, if you kill me with kindness,” Wash managed to whisper. “I haven’t figured out how to breathe without pulling air into my lungs just yet, and you’re not making it any easier.”
River kissed her just behind her ear, let go, and backed up a few steps.
“Sorry, jei jei,” she said, and Wash could hear the smile in her voice. “But you did it. You did what you came back for. You should be proud. You saved everybody, just like you were supposed to.”
“I guess I did at that,” Wash replied, her own grin growing. She spun her chair around to face the younger girl ... and came face to face with Zoe instead.
The first mate sat in the co-pilot’s chair and stared at Linda, half-confused and halfway to putting all the pieces together.
“River ... called you Hoban,” she whispered, “and I just saw you make the ship disappear while not really going anywhere at all ... and you ... you said the same ... the same thing ... that he said when he managed to land Serenity ... after the EMP pulse ...
Zoe looked up at River, then back to the pilot. Her eyes narrowed. “And there’s only one person I’ve ever known who would dare lie to a black hole and think he could get away with it.” Her voice took on a tone somewhere between wonder, surprise, happiness – and anger.
“Wash? Is that you?”
The pilot felt hot all over, then cold, and then about ten different kinds of embarrassed. She could feel herself blushing, thinking about talking to Zoe ... about Jayne. But at the same time, part of her was relieved that the hiding was over – at least between her and Zoe.
“Hi, lamby-toes,” she said weakly, holding up both hands. “Believe it or not, I can explain.”
Whatever she was going to say next was interrupted by Zoe leaping at her from across the flight deck, wrapping her in a hug even tighter than River’s was, and giving her the kind of kiss that Wash remembered oh so well from when she and Zoe were man and wife.
And gorram if it didn’t feel just as good now as it did then.
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 second part of a sequel to Firefly: Double Booked, which was in turn a sequel to Firefly: Connecting Flight. This means it has 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.
In the second part of FIREFLY: CHANGING COURSE, Wash's revelation and others lead to big changes for the crew -- and for the future.
Mal sat up and looked around. For a minute, the interior of Inara’s shuttle looked back at him in the semi-darkness, while Inara breathed softly beside him.
“Gorram,” he whispered, waiting for something to confirm what had woken him. “I coulda sworn ...”
“Could have sworn what?” He turned and Inara’s eyes were open, looking up at him.
“Coulda sworn Serenity did a hard burn.”
She smiled. “That would be a neat trick, with Linda in sick bay and the ship on auto-pilot.”
“Well, something woke me,” he said slowly, and scanned the room again as if waiting for something to jump out. “And I been trusting my instincts too long to just let it go.”
Inara reached up and touched his shoulder. He looked down at her, and her face was serious.
“I’ve learned to trust your instincts, too, Mal. Wash always used to say the ship had a mind of her own, so maybe she did do a hard burn. But I’m sure she had her reasons, and it’s not happening anymore, is it?”
Mal took a few seconds to collect his thoughts.
“You think the ship did it ... her own self? Do you really believe that, ‘Nara?”
“I don’t know for sure.” Inara shrugged. “After all, it’s a big Verse, and hundreds of impossible things happen every day. Just look at me here, in bed with you.” She smiled to let him know she was joking. “But whether the ship did a hard burn or not, it’s not doing it now. Maybe you should get back to sleeping? After all, you’ve got all those captainy things you’re supposed to be doing in the morning, don’t you?”
He looked at her for a few more seconds, then smiled and shook his head.
“Yeah, those captainy things ...” After another minute, the Captain sighed. “I guess I can tell Kaylee to check the engines tomorrow. That’s a captainy thing, too. I’ll add it to the list.”
Inara nodded solemnly, and Mal lay back down again. She melted into him as he put his arm around her, and she sighed as well. For a few minutes, there was quiet.
“Mal?” Inara whispered.
“Sorta working on that whole sleeping thing at the moment,” he replied, his voice a little muzzy.
“What would you say if I told you I wanted to stop being a Companion, and just be yours?”
She felt him freeze, and then he relaxed. He held her a little tighter, and then he turned his head until his cheek rested on her hair.
“See? It’s questions like that one that put sleep right out of mind. And comin’ damned near out of the Black, too. Not that I’m complainin’, now ... but have you been thinkin’ about this long?”
“Since before the depot on Boros,” she said softly. “I just never felt like it was the right time to tell you. And if I do stop ... companioning, I’m not sure what I could do here, other than make you happy.”
“Well, you do that pretty well.” He kissed her forehead.
“That’s not a job, though ... even if you make it difficult sometimes.” She reached over and placed her hand on his chest. “I just want to be ... useful, that all. A valuable member of the crew.”
“I don’t recall Shepard Book havin’ any sort of job description at all.” Inara felt Mal’s smile. “But he was crew, sure enough. And you’ve been crew since long before we did the Lassiter job, even if nobody came right out and said it. No need to justify anythin’, ‘Nara.”
“There is for me,” she replied. “Mal, if I’m to be your woman, yours and yours alone ... I need a purpose on Serenity. Otherwise, I’m just dead weight ... and I never ever want to feel that way.”
They held each other for a while, and she felt Mal smile again.
“You already have a job on my boat, ‘Nara,” he said. “Something you’ve been doing on the side since you first rented the shuttle. Just need to make it official ... Ambassador.”
She sighed. “Mal ...”
“Just listen a minute. I’m not stupid, but I don’t know what you know, and every time we get close to the Core we run the risk of breakin’ some gorram law we don’t know about, or worse, doin’ something we shouldn’t that’s gonna bring us to the attention of somebody we’d rather avoid, like Niska or the feds. Like as I nearly got myself killed ‘cause I didn’t understand about dueling that time on Persephone.”
“And even out on the Rim, you saved Zoe and me during the train job with some quick thinkin’, even if it did hurt a mite. As much as I hate the Alliance, you know a hell of a lot more about some of it than I do. Your job is gonna be to keep us outta trouble with the locals as much as you can — both the feds and everybody else that might have a reason to take a dislike to us on account of we ain’t from around there.”
There was another long silence. Mal sighed.
“Listen, ‘Nara. I don’t like the Alliance, and I never have. That gives me a blind spot as a Captain that could wind up hurting my crew. I need you to show me the things I’m gonna miss, and smooth the way in places where being diplomatic ain’t my first choice. That’s your job, if you’ll take it.”
She thought for a moment, and then it was her turn to sigh. Inara gave Mal a squeeze.
“I’m just crew,” she whispered. “You’re the Captain. So I guess you’ve got yourself an Ambassador.”
“And a whole lot more,” he replied, and she could hear the smile in his voice.
Wash, Zoe and River sat in the darkened kitchen, with cups of Kaylee’s wine sitting untouched in front of them. The story of how Wash came to be Linda took up most of an hour, leaving all three of them wondering where the conversation was going to go next.
They didn’t have long to wait.
“Jayne,” Zoe said, a touch of amazement in her tone. Wash blushed and looked down, and the first mate smiled. “Damn, girl, you look pretty when you’re embarrassed.”
“Thanks ... I think.” The pilot raised her eyes and looked at her ex-wife. “It’s easy to be embarrassed when the woman you loved more than life itself finds you entering a relationship with another man.”
“But you’re not.” Zoe put her hand on Wash’s. “You love Jayne, and he’s not another man. He’s just a man. And you, husband, are a woman. And also not my husband anymore, come to think of it.”
“Til death do us part, I know.” Wash turned her hand over and gave Zoe’s a squeeze. “But I still love you. Not even death changed that. That’s why I came back, more than anything. I couldn’t stand the thought of us being apart.”
“And I love you too, baby. I always will.” The first mate paused, and looked into Wash’s eyes. “But … you know I’m not sly. Girls don’t curl my toes the way you used to. Not even a girl as sexy as you are now.”
The pilot looked down, and then nodded. “I know. The minute I got past the shock of being a woman, I knew it wasn’t ever going to be the same. It took a while to sink in all the way, but ... I know.”
“You’re cute when you blush, fly girl.” She smiled. “I can’t believe my husband is hotter than I am.”
Wash shook her head. “It’s like vanilla and chocolate, lamby toes. Both sweet, in different ways.” River laughed, and the pilot blushed a deeper red. “I can’t believe I said that. Hell, I can’t believe I thought that.”
“You are pretty sweet, you know,” Zoe said, reaching across and taking her hand. “You make a damned fine woman. Funny thing, though. I can still see the man I loved in you, now that I know where to look, and what to look for.”
“So, where does that leave us?”
The first mate gave her hand a squeeze.
“Friends, for sure,” she replied. “And if you plan on being Jayne’s woman, you’re going to need all the friends you can get.”
“I didn’t plan it.” Wash looked at Zoe and summoned up a small smile. “Any more than you planned to be mine. But I’m sitting here, and weird as it sounds, I do love him. At the same time, the thought of being with him ... like that, it’s –”
“Terrifying.” River spoke up. “And exciting. And exhilarating.”
Zoe and Wash both turned and looked at her. River shrugged.
“I don’t have to be a reader to figure that out. For Wash, it’s the last irrevocable step towards womanhood. She has to take it, and she wants to. But it commits her, both to Jayne and to being Linda. So it’s scary.”
“It’s all manner of weird that you can just do that,” Wash said, looking at the younger girl. “Go walking through the inside of my head like it’s a park on Osiris.”
“Doesn’t make it any less true, does it?” River grinned. The pilot sighed.
“No, you’re right. I’ve come to accept being Linda … being a woman. But admitting I love Jayne crossed a line, and there’s only one line left to cross.”
Zoe reached over and took her hand. “I’ll help, baby. You know that. And it's not like it's ever been an easy line to cross, not even if you're born female. The first time is always something special, and also a little bit frightening. But at the same time, most girls know deep inside that this is what they were built for. The scary stuff is wondering if you picked the right guy, and if he'll be gentle, and if it will hurt, and what will it feel like if it doesn't hurt."
She gave Wash's hand a squeeze. "From what I can see, you picked the right guy, and he'll be so afraid of not treating you right he'll wind up taking it too slow ... and you'll probably get so frustrated, you’ll do anything to get him past treating you like you're made of glass."
Zoe stood up, and pulled the pilot to her feet.
"Right now, you need to do what Simon told you to do and rest."
"But --"
She put her finger on Wash’s lips. “I outrank you, dear. And Simon said you needed to rest tonight, not save the ship from certain doom. So go to bed ... now.” The first mate grinned. “After all, this may be the last night you get to sleep alone for a good long while.”
Wash looked at her ex-wife, and she felt her eyes fill up an instant before she suddenly pulled Zoe into a hug.
“This isn’t how it was supposed to be for us,” the pilot whispered. “It’s not fair.”
Zoe gave her a squeeze. “No, but it is what it is, baby. At least I’ve got you back. You’ve always been my best friend, and you still are. And I do want you to be happy, sweety, even if it is with Jayne.” She grinned. “So go to bed. We’ll figure out the rest tomorrow.”
The first mate took a step back, spun her former husband around and gave her a swat on the backside. “Now get.”
Wash looked back, gave her a shy smile, and headed for the crew quarters.
After she left, River and Zoe stood there for a while, silent.
“You’re very good,” the younger girl said softly. “I’m pretty sure she doesn’t suspect a thing.”
“Thank you,” Zoe replied, her voice flat with suppressed emotion. “Moving on is hard enough for . . . her, especially wrapped in a body like that. I’m not sure what else you expected me to do.”
“Nothing else you could do.” River moved closer and touched her arm. “It’s not like Chiang had much of a choice. Linda was available, and we needed Wash to be here, too. But I know it’s hard for you. It must feel like you’re losing him, all over again.”
Zoe’s jaw moved, just a little, and her whole body tensed an instant before she shook her head.
“I got him back,” she whispered. “Maybe not the way I hoped, but he’s not dead. I shouldn’t complain, but I want to, because she’s right. It’s not fair. But I learned a long time ago that what’s right and what is don’t usually share a bunk. In this Verse, you make your own luck, and you take what you can get. And I do want her to be happy. She’s a woman, now. Why should I stand between her and Jayne?”
The younger girl smiled, and nodded. “That’s about what I expected you to say.”
Zoe smiled back, a little sadly, and turned to go. River let her take a step before she spoke again.
“When are you going to tell her … about the baby?”
The first mate turned around, shocked. Her hand came up to touch her waist.
“How did you know?” she whispered. “Did you …?”
“Read you? No.” River shook her head. “Actually, a number of things gave it away, but to be fair, a few things helped you keep it a secret as long as you did. A woman’s first pregnancy doesn’t usually show as much in the early months, according to what I read on the Cortex. And you keep yourself very fit, so your stomach muscles did a lot to help you hide it for as long as you have. But you’re in the middle of your fourth month now, and it shows if you know what to look for. You’re walking a little differently, and half of your clothes haven’t left your cabin in weeks.”
Zoe lowered herself into a chair and sighed. “Who else knows?”
“Inara is pretty sure, and Kaylee suspects, but they both think it’s your secret to tell.” The younger girl sat across from her and took her hand. “Simon figured it out a while back but is working on respecting your privacy — although if you don’t come forward voluntarily in the next week or so, he is about ready to drag you into the med bay for a prenatal exam. Other than my brother, the men are totally clueless. Which is almost their natural state, come to think of it.”
She smiled, and Zoe smiled back. Her whole body relaxed, and they shared a silence.
“You are going to have to tell her, you know,” River said, and the first mate nodded.
“I will. She deserves to know first. After all, it’s her baby, too. But not now. She’d going through enough as it is.” Without thinking about it, Zoe’s other hand dropped and rested on her stomach, feeling the baby bump she knew she couldn’t hide for much longer. “Wash needs to get used to being Jayne’s woman before ...”
“Before she can let go of ever being a father,” River finished, “and learn to become an aunt. Or even a mother herself, someday.”
“Another reason not to tell her yet — at least not before she gets to lie down with Jayne, anyway.” The first mate smiled and patted where her child was growing. “After all, being reminded what’s supposed to happen when a woman and a man ... get together might make her hesitate, and we wouldn’t want that.”
“Not before she gets to feel why a woman might want to take that risk.” River nodded, and Zoe grinned back.
“Over and over again.”
When Wash woke up the next morning, there was a feeling of unreality surrounding her. It felt like the whole experience with the quantum black hole and Zoe finding out the truth could almost be just some kind of really vivid dream, and nothing at all would have changed for her.
But her shoulders ached in places they hadn’t right after the big damned rescue on Flynt, and she remembered Zoe’s reaction all too well from the night before. She felt tears rising, and pushed them back. Gods, she had missed Zoe so much, and had hated lying to her … especially after Zoe had made her peace with Linda taking Wash’s job.
‘But it’s different now,’ she thought as she washed herself, the cloth running over her now all-too-familiar curves. ‘She’s more than a sister, even more than a friend. But she’s not mine anymore. And I’m … I’m Jayne’s. I’m his. Damn, that feels strange, even to think it. But it’s true.’
Wash felt her body reacting to the thought, and pushed it away.
‘If I don’t finish washing and get dressed, I’m going to miss breakfast. And the Captain woke everybody over the comms this morning and told everybody they needed to be there. Sounded like it was going to be important. I wonder if he felt the ship go into hard burn last night?’ She thought for a moment, then shook her head and stared rinsing off. ‘If he had felt it last night, he sure wouldn’t wait to the morning to start asking questions about it.’
She walked across the room and pulled some lingerie from the drawer, then turned to the closet and saw herself in the mirror. She turned slowly, then bent down and slipped her panties on. When they were seated properly, Wash turned sideways again, wondering whether there was a touch too much of her around the hips. As she put on her bra and settled her breasts in each cup, she found herself worrying about whether her chest was starting to sag a little.
“Oh, please! You’re so close to perfect it’s scary.”
Wash gasped and turned to find River’s head poking down from the ductwork above.
“You said you weren’t going to read me anymore!”
River did a perfect roll from the ceiling, landing lightly on her feet.
“I didn’t read your mind, Linda,” she replied. “I read your face. I’ve seen that expression on my own face often enough to know what it means. I’ve never met a woman who was truly satisfied with how she looks. Congratulations, honey. You really are one of us now.”
The younger girl hugged her gently, and Wash wondered how to respond to a hug delivered while she was almost naked. River pulled back and grinned.
“You hug me back, silly!”
Wash shrugged, smiled back, and gave her a hug in return.
“Good. Now get dressed in something special, and climb on out of your room. Breakfast is waiting, and so is Jayne.”
“Something special?”
“Your man is waiting for you outside your door,” River said, springing back up into the ceiling, facing back towards the common room. She stuck her head back down. “He’s been there for a while. And it’s the morning of the first day of your life as his woman. You want him to remember why he’s waiting, and never forget how lucky he is to have you.”
She pulled her head back and the ceiling panel shut with a muted clang.
Jayne heard Linda’s door open, and the sound of her feet as she climbed the ladder up to the passageway where he waited. He saw her face when it appeared in the doorway, and the shy half-smile she showed him when she realized he was there. But his jaw dropped when she completed her climb and stood there in front of him.
‘That dress,’ he thought, his eyes taking her in from head to toe.
It was that yellow thing she wore on Boros, the one that wrapped all around her and hugged her body like a second skin, and Jayne saw her cheeks grow red as he took her in from head to toe. Her eyes lowered.
“Do you remember this dress?” she asked softly. He nodded, and she smiled. “Do you like it as much now as you did then?”
Jayne reached out and took her hand, then pulled her into him and kissed her. A lot.
Linda pulled back and looked up into his eyes, then took the edge of her thumb and rubbed a little lipstick off of the edge of his mouth.
“I guess I should take that as a yes,” she said with a grin. “I should’ve figured that would be how you’d answer, being the strong silent type and all.”
“Silent? You just wait until tonight, girl,” he replied, “and you’ll find out just how much noise this man can make in bed.”
She stood on her toes and kissed him gently on the lips, then put her arm in his.
“Keep talking like that, and I might not be able to wait until tonight.”
He froze for a minute, then stumbled after her as she started walking towards the kitchen, their arms still intertwined.
Mal and Inara were waiting for them, and Zoe walked in behind them, giving Wash a wink and a smile. Simon and Kaylee arrived from the passenger quarters, with River a few steps behind. After giving Jayne and Linda a quick glance, followed by a suppressed smile, he turned back to the table.
“I got two things to say this morning. First things first. I woke up last night ‘cause I thought I felt Serenity go into hard burn. Maybe it was a dream, maybe it wasn’t, but I don’t want to take any chances with my boat. Kaylee, I need you to check the engine and control systems, make sure the ship ain’t getting all notional about wantin’ to fly her own self.”
The mechanic nodded. “Sure will, Captain. Thought I felt somethin’, too, … though that might have been Simon going into hard burn instead of the ship.” She grinned, and the ship’s doctor turned red.
Linda looked at Zoe, then River. Zoe gave her the barest shake of her head, while River spoke directly into her mind. “Kaylee won’t find anything wrong, since the ship did exactly what you asked her to do. No sense getting the captain worrying about quantum black holes, so best keep quiet, jei mei.”
“Now for the second thing before we get down to the real business of breakfast, which is eatin’.” He looked at everyone, then cleared his throat. “Inara isn’t going to be renting her shuttle from us anymore.”
Five of the six crew members around the table began to speak simultaneously, River being the sole exception, but the protests only lasted a second or two before Mal raised his hand flat out, and the group fell silent.
“She ain’t renting the shuttle because she’s decided to stop being a Companion and officially become part of the crew. Sometimes I will admit, I tend to let Serenity Valley … affect my command decisions a mite. Her job is going to be making sure my hate for the Alliance don't wind up making us all dead.”
“The official title is Ambassador,” Inara said softly, letting her hand rest on Mal’s. “I’m just a resource for the Captain, really. I’ll let him know the lay of the land on some of the Core planets, maybe send me ahead sometimes to smooth things out before Serenity comes down.”
“Well, that’s a good place for you.” Zoe smiled. “Right by his side, keepin’ him out of trouble.”
“Not to mention the rest of us.” Mal grinned back and ducked his head. “Anything she can do to help a few more of our plans go smooth would be a kindness, and that’s a fact.”
River raised her hand.
“Got somethin’ to add, little albatross?” Mal said with a smile.
“There’s something Inara could probably help with right away,” River replied, smiling back. “I did move a lot of currency through a lot of banks in a hurry, and it might be nice to clean it up and make it all legal looking before someone wants to know where it all came from.”
“And how much exactly is a lot?” Jayne asked, earning him a nudge from Linda’s elbow.
The younger Tam pursed her lips.
“Too much, I think. I let my fingers have their way, and moved far more than I should have.” River’s eyes turned serious as she focused on Jayne. “Greed tends to be dangerous to the people who let it drive them, as I’m sure you know, Jayne.”
He nodded and looked down at the table top. Linda looked at River for a second, then put her hand on Jayne’s and gave it a squeeze.
“Just as long as we got enough coin to keep us flyin’, I’m happy,” he said. “As long as we took enough from those lecherous humps on Flynt to make ‘em hurt, that’ll do.”
“Not to worry.” River smiled again. “If the gas ever wears off, they won’t stop crying, I can guarantee that.”
Jayne nodded and turned his hand over, squeezing Linda’s in turn. River turned back to Mal. “Also, Captain, there is the possibility you may not need an Ambassador. In fact, considering how much I did take, you might want to reconsider your career options.”
Mal raised an eyebrow.
“If you put together all the accounts that I set up on Osiris,” she said, “there would be enough zeros on the end of the balance to restart the old Allied Spacecraft Corporation production line, build and buy a hundred brand new Firefly transports from scratch … and have enough left over to crew ‘em, fuel ‘em, and fly ‘em around in circles for the next three hundred years.”
The whole room froze. Mal's jaw dropped.
“And if that’s what you want to do with your share,” she continued with a grin, “you might want to consider promoting yourself to Admiral … Sir.”
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