The Treasure of Lei Fong Wu

Chapter Eighty Five

“Everyone secure, Travelers?” Wash asked into the mike. He was strapping himself into the pilot’s chair, something he did only if he was attempting a landing or an ascent through turbulent weather patterns. He was that concerned about their chances, something Mal did not fail to notice. “I’m not feeling secure,” Mal quipped as he entered the bridge. “I’m still contemplating just why I agreed to this stunt in the first place,” he said as he took the chair behind Wash. Technically, it was the Navigator’s Chair, but Wash did his own navigation. Mal made a show of strapping himself in. “Engine room secure,” Kaylee reported. “Shuttle secure,” Inara said. “Book is saying a prayer over us.” “That’s a go on the prayer,” Wash said with a heavy sigh. “We’re gonna need it.” “I’m ready,” River said, simply. She was already doing the first calculations in her head and tapping out potential solutions into the grav drive controls. “This really gonna work?” Mal asked, skeptically. “It really will,” River assured as she entered data. “If not, you’ll be dead so quick you won’t know it,” she added. “Good, ‘cause the last thing I want is to spend the last few moments of my mediocre life thinking, ‘Why the hell did we let the crazy kid plot the course?’” Wash checked his board. “If there are no other last regrets, I think we’re ready to begin the suicide run.” “She’ll hold together,” River assured him. “She’s strong.” “I’m pretty sure this voids the warranty,” Wash agreed. “Let’s do it before I run out of one-liners.” He breathed a deep, cleansing breath. He didn’t bother to wait for Mal’s command. He wiped his sweaty palms on the pants leg of his borrowed Imperial flightsuit and began his descent. “Who wants to live forever?” he asked himself. “I do!” Mal squeaked as almost immediately Serenity began to be buffeted about. “Thirty seconds to cut-off!” Wash warned, speaking loud enough to be heard above the rumble of the engines. In front of him through the viewscreen the gas giant of which Hecate was a satellite dominated the view. They were headed right for it. Technically, not right for it. Jovian planets were, of course, completely inhospitable to all life, the extremes of gravity and pressure heading a long list of reasons why they were seen as marketable resources and precious else by humanity. Every jovian planet in this corner of the ‘verse had been surveyed by the Alliance at one point or another, and every singe one of them had a published gravitational horizon beyond which it was death to drift. Most ships avoided even the possibility of approaching such a massive gravity well. One mistake, and all hope of rescue were gone. There were ships powerful enough to traverse this horizon and return, but they were massive brutes like the Sun Tzu, or specially designed mining ships with five times the power output of a conventional ship, and they were few and far between. They most certainly were not ancient Firefly medium transport ships. Serenity plunged into the outer blanket of gas, a thin layer of hydrogen helium that was so sparse it nearly was the Black. But it thickened quickly as they descended. It didn’t take long for the resistance of the gas to start pushing the little ship around a bit, and there was a disturbing hum, a vibration that was novel to the crew. The turbulence was nothing Wash couldn’t handle – he’d had worse times with thunderstorms before. But as his monitor showed the rapid approach of that gravity horizon, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up at attention, an unintentional side effect to the raw terror that was plaguing him, part of his pilot’s reflexes.. This was too much like intentionally crashing. River’s theory had been elegant and simple. The “slingshot” trick, using a planetary body’s mass as a pivot point around which to fly to use the gravity of the world to boost acceleration, was well known. The closer you got to the planet – the deeper into that well – the faster you came out on the other side. If you didn’t hit anything. That was actually a consideration. The alchemical soup of jovian worlds, combined with the intense radiation, the magnetism, the pressures and the various densities of the layers of all manner of exotic matter in the thick atmo could produce some incredible effects, not all of them limited to gaseous form. Small, floating “rocks” with the consistency of balsa wood and the density of a ping pong ball, had been hauled out of jovians before. Pretty crystalline structures could also form, anything from small gossamers of crystal threads to house-sized crystal lattices that floated suspended on more dense gaseous layers. Both possibilities were problematic. They might have the density of a sponge, but at her current velocity even the most delicate sponge could ruin Serenity’s day, if an untimely collision were to occur. River’s solution to the problem had been inspired by both Emperor Lei Fong Wu’s elegant method of storing the Sun Tzu and Rowan McLintock’s scary landing on the Sky Dragon. River plotted for Serenity to skim the jovian atmo well below the safe threshold, using the ship’s grav drive to keep the titanic forces involved at bay for the brief time the Firefly would be in danger. For this to work the ship had to be traveling at top speed – hence the first slingshot around Hecate, at full burn, that had set them up for this plunge. When it entered the gravity horizon the drive would act as a shield, but nothing more. It was merely to keep everyone alive for the six minutes of prolonged exposure they would have to endure. River waited to the very last millisecond before she redirected the grav drive and plunged the ship into zero-gee. The sudden weightless feeling caught everyone for a second, though they all knew it was coming, and then it was enjoyable. And then not so much. As Serenity plunged deeper into the gravity well, her grav drive fought against the titanic force that wanted to suck her into the planet’s strange dual core. Although the drive, as River plied it, was sufficient strength to prevent that, it was not enough to mask the pull completely from her crew. Within moments, the giddy feeling of weightlessness was replaced by the normal ass-in-the-chair feeling one got in a spaceship. And then everyone started to gain weight, as the filter of the grave drive struggled to keep it at bay. “She’s gonna hold!” River insisted above the din of creaking and complaining metal all around them. “She gorram better!” Mal said. There was at least a hint of fright in his eyes, though the smile on his face indicated at least part of him was enjoying it. “How much we weight?” “A gee and a half and rising!” Wash responded as he did his best to keep her on course. “We can hold out at least four, maybe six. I can take eight for about a minute before I black out. But I don’t want to put Book under the strain. His heart might give out.” “We won’t have more than five point seven four nine gees,” River said, casually. “And then only for about seventy six seconds. After that we’re on the other side!” “Any way we can shorten that?” Mal called loudly. “Not without more power to the gravs,” Wash said, shaking his head. “I’ll try, though. Kaylee! Hind End!” “Whatcha need, Wash?” “Power!” “Uh . . . how much? ‘Cause she ain’t real happy about now.” “All you got and all you can borrow. Shut down everything what isn’t needed for breathing, and dump it all into the gravs.” “Might could be dangerous,” the engineer warned. Wash stared out at the starkly beautiful cloudscape that was half heaven and half hell, knowing that one false move by any of them would make this eerily beautiful sight the last they all saw. “Gee, wouldn’t want that now, would we? Just do it!” “Aye, Wash!” “Thank God Jayne isn’t here,” Wash said. “I don’t think I could stand the whining!” “Jayne? How about my brother?” River asked as she punched in the new adjustment and began calculating the next one. It may have taken a graduate student in physics half a day and a computer to make these calculations, but River was knocking out a few every sixty seconds. “The cool thing about this experience is not having to listen to him in my head screaming ‘Oh my God! He’s gonna kill us all!’” Wash looked over. “Who, me?” “I think he’s mostly thinking of the Captain,” River nodded. “But you get mentioned pretty much every time we land or launch.” “He’s worried about my piloting?” Wash said, his forearms bulging as he struggled with the wheel. “Remind me to take him out for a shuttle ride, sometime.” “I wonder if it would hurt her feelings if Zoe was the only one we came back for?” Mal mused. “Be a damn sight quieter on this boat.” “I’d just take up the slack,” River said, absently. “I have great unused capacities for volume.” “We just hit three gees,” Wash said. “My face is starting to hurt.” “I guess this was what it was like to be in a rocket before all the trans-nuclear stuff,” River said, excitedly as she pounded more adjustments into the board. “We’ve got the drive working at a hundred and two percent efficiency!” “Yea, Kaylee,” Mal said through gritted teeth. “Never thought I’d hear of anything on this boat at a hundred percent or above.” “Well, don’t get used to it,” Wash replied with a little effort. “This kind of strain ain’t good on a drive. She should hold together, but if we shatter a ring then you’re going to spend the last moment of your life fondly reminiscing about the light and airy feeling you get at three gees.” “We won’t shatter a ring,” Mal said, loudly. “Will we, girl?” he asked the ship. “We’re right on schedule – and if you two gloomy gusses stop stop thinking so negative—” River insisted. “You’ll hurt her feelings!” Wash’s next brilliant smartassed comment was lost in the tumult of a particularly bad spot of turbulence. The increasing gravity didn’t help, of course, but he was able to muscle the ship through the rough spot without losing control. Barely. “What’s our delta vee?” Wash called out worriedly in the middle of his struggle. “I don’t see it,” River complained. “It’s on the portside monitor, in the corner,” he said, never taking his eyes off of the thick orange blanket of gas outside. “I know where it is -- I can’t see it, someone spilled something on it,” River said, fingers flying. “God, River, what is it?!” he begged. If they started to lose any significant fraction of their velocity, the ship may not escape the gravity well. “I think it’s . . . chili, of some sort.” She looked up, confused. “When was the last time we had chili?” “River!” “We’re eighteen percent over max,” Mal offered from the navigator’s chair. “Which means . . . eighty one point seven four two eight three three three . . .” River recited to herself. “One minute until it gets uncomfortable.” “You mean this ain’t uncomfortable?” Mal called out. “We’re at four and eight tenths gees!” The ship was certainly complaining with a chorus of grinding joints and stressed metal. The hum was significantly louder and scarier now, too. “Not for us!” River called back. “For Serenity!” “What?” Mal asked. “River! What did you not tell me . . .?” “Don’t worry!” River called back. “Just a detail! I’m on it! I’m on it!” “On what?” Mal asked, confused. “Grav drive is only rated so far,” River explained. “As we skip through the deeper layer of gas, the pressures will rise precipitously. Lots more particulate matter. That would slow us down too much, give us too much drag. I’m using the output of the secondaries to develop a gravometric field wave to ease our passage.” “What?” Mal asked in disbelief. “I’m. Using. The. Emergency. Grav. Drive. Capacity. To Push. The Gas. Out of our way,” she said, rolling her eyes. Her fingers did not stop moving. “Is that safe?” he asked, his eyes a little wider than usual. “As opposed to . . . ?” Wash asked, sparing the Captain a glance. “It should be fine. The frequency of discharge on the secondaries is high enough to cause a field wave to develop, now that the primaries are oriented away.” “And it should have a nice, juicy charge, too,” Wash added with a grin. “Kaylee just upgraded the capacitors!” River stopped what she was doing. “What?” she asked, in disbelief. “What, what?” Wash shot back, looking confused. “Kaylee replaced the capacitors?” “Yeah! She salvaged two big ones from a laser array off of a Marauder back on the Sun Tzu. Slapped ‘em in this morning. They won’t blow nigh the Second Coming.” “Q’in gue je deh! Ai ya women wanle!” River screamed. “What? What’s wrong?” the pilot asked, starting to panic. “She replaced the gorram capacitors!” “That’s what I just said!” “But my wave calculations were based on the old cap’s yield!” “But the new one’s work fine! And they won’t blow out!” “But the rate of discharge is going to be off! They take longer to build a charge!” “And that’s . . . a bad thing?” “My numbers are wrong!” River shouted. “Gorram it! My gorram numbers are wrong!” “They can’t be!” Wash denied, a look of horror on his face. “Well, come up with some new ones! Make some stuff up! And expediency would not suck!” River grabbed the mike and shouted into it. “Kaylee! What’s the frequency rate on the new capacitors! Quick!” Seconds ticked by like hours, the heavy gravity making them all profoundly aware of their every heartbeat. Finally, she returned. “One point eight eight four!” Kaylee screamed back. “Why?” “Not talk now!” River said, dropping the intercom as if it had suddenly become hot. “Think, brain, think . . .” Her face was screwed up in a mixture of concentration and anguish, and she was biting her lip hard enough to break the skin. “Oh,” she said, finally. She shrugged and went back to plugging in numbers. “What?!” Wash demanded. “What’s wrong? Right? River, talk to us and not the voices for a moment, can you, please?” “It’s fine, it’s shiny, everything’s shiny,” River said, calmly. “The new numbers aren’t bad. We’ll still pull through. The field will form, just not like I planned. We’ll still reduce the drag enough to pass through the denser material. Only we might pick up a slight static EM charge, nothing to be worried about.” “Wait, “ Mal insisted. “What do you mean a static EM charge?” “We’re entering the bad part . . . now. Serenity will become . . . slightly negative,” River stated, still madly adjusting the grav drive output. “Ain’t we all,” grunted Mal, as there was a sudden slip, and for a moment everything went to six gees before lightening again. “Yeah, the only thing we’d have to be worried about would be lightning,” River said. “Yeah, and what are the chances of that?” Wash asked, as he brought the ship out of an eddy with a particularly harsh thump. As if by magic, half the boards on the console exploded in a shower of sparks, and alarms erupted everywhere. The acrid smell of burnt wire insulation and fried silicon filled the air. “What the hell?” Wash spat. His hands had never left the wheel. “We took a hit!” Mal said. “Hull’s intact, I think, . . . and we didn’t lose pressure, but something hit us!” “Where? Where, gorram it?” Wash pleaded. Mal fumbled around, hitting switches that did not work anymore half the time, and checking a few of the working monitors. “Looks to be Shuttle Two! Sensors are out all over the port side!” He grabbed the intercom. “Kaylee! What’s going on?” It took several moments for her to answer, and Mal’s feeling of dread grew with every second – and when she did answer her voice did not betray the sense of confidence Mal so wanted to hear. It was shrill and excited. “Cap’n? We took a hit!” “I know that, darlin’,” Mal soothed. “You okay?” “I’m fine,” Kaylee said. “Engine’s still turnin’ but she ain’t happy about the hit.” “What kind, and how bad?” “Looks electrical . . . but let me work on it . . .” “Unless it’s slowing us down, leave it,” Mal ordered. “Need you where you can do the most good.” “It looks like it’ll keep,” admitted the engineer a moment later. “’Sides, I ain’t keen ‘bout how her engine’s soundin’. Wanna keep two eyes on her right now.” “You know best, Kaylee,” agreed Mal. While he was getting a damage report Wash was still struggling to keep the ship on course and barking orders. “River, half my systems are shorted out, I’ve got helm control and attitude, but no radar monitor – you’re gonna have to yell if a rock gets in our way – you manage that?” “On it,” she agreed. “It looks like that lightning thing actually happens. Who knew? The statistical probabilities were staggering, based on the data I had. I suppose it stands to reason, considering the amount of static charge such a complex—” “River, tend to your knittin’!” Mal insisted. “This joyride ain’t but half over!” “I said I’m on it!” River snapped. “We’re about over the hump, and then—” For the second time in two minutes, an explosion shook the ship, and suddenly the clouds outside weren’t pretty cotton candy any more, but a shrieking, hellish spiral of vertigo. Mal struggled against the gravity as he checked the damage control board. Between the blown board and the blown sensors, it was difficult to get a lock on what was going on, but with a combination of fortune and skill, he managed to spot the problem anyway. “We’re good! No loss of pressure! Looks like the shuttle’s fuel tank blew out!” “That’s just gorram great,” Wash said, staring intently out of the viewport as he put a Herculean effort into fighting the ship under control. “We’re spinning!” he sang. “We’re not going to die! We’re not going to die!” River chanted emphatically. “Leaf . . . wind . . .” muttered the pilot. “Gull . . . breeze . . .” “Looks like we had a little fire,” Mal called out. “Confined to the shuttle, exterior to the lock. I’ve depressurized it now.” He looked up at the spinning clouds outside. “Kuan jeh deh!” Mal swore, and shut his eyes, then opened them again, determined not to let the spiraling clouds upset his poise. “Look at the pretty colors . . .Wash, you okay?” “I’m ruttin’ peachy, Sir!” he spat. “Leave me alone!” “River?” “Fine. Shut up now.” “A simple ‘aye, aye, Captain,’ would suffice,” he grumbled. He didn’t push. The next several moments were tense and silent, the only sounds coming from the alarms, the tortured metal of the ship, and the involuntarily gasps and chokes of the crew. Wash fought the controls, but didn’t do so in a panic. He was finding the Way in Flight, and every move he made was to correct the ship’s attitude. He tried a few tactics to right their direction – their velocity hadn’t changed, luckily. They just weren’t pointing at their desired destination as they hurtled towards it, spinning like a pinwheel. But slowly and surely Wash was able to bring the ship back under control until she was flying in the proper direction once again. While his arms did not relax their grip one bit, his face broadcast his relief. “Delta vee . . . is right where it’s supposed to be. Course and position positive. Gravity is three point six and falling . . .” He reached for the mike as the orange and white plumes of dirty hydrogen faded and the familiar starfield of the Black was revealed once more. “Travelers, we have just skirted the outer edge of a gas giant and lived to tell the tale . . . write this down in your diaries, ‘cause you’ll never do the like again . . . with this particular pilot!” “Damn good job,” Mal agreed. “I take it they don’t teach that sort of thing in flight school?” “Only in the ‘avoid at all costs’ class. Still, I’ve known a lotta sky jockeys over the years, spacers with decades more experience than me, been everywhere, seen it all. And I’ve never heard the gorram like o’ that little hell ride!” “How long until we catch up with the Relentless?” Mal asked. “After we come out of atmo and leave orbit we’ll be able to catch up in just a few hours,” Wash answered. “But then what? Stage two of your master plan?” “We dock with them and parley,” Mal said. “And just how are we gonna manage that?” Wash asked, skeptically. “That ship has got some serious artillery, there. Last time they didn’t have any power, and they still nearly blew me out of the sky!” “Old pirate trick Vic Stiles taught me,” Mal answered. “We slip around their guns and get ahead of them, then Kaylee whips up a batch of highly charged plasma and pumps it out into their wake. We do it right, then their navsat computer is useless and they heave to and recalibrate, or go off course.” “Or, conversely, they shoot us out of the sky,” offered Wash. “With those big damn guns I may have failed to mention.” “Nah, they won’t,” Mal said. “We got somethin’ they want. If we have River on board – or they think we do – they won’t do anything to put her in peril.” “And then they’ll open up their airlock in the interest of human kindness?” “Nope. They open it up. Or else.” “ ‘Or else?’” Wash asked in disbelief. “Or else,” Mal said, solemnly. “Hey, is that the gravity going away?” Wash rolled his eyes and groaned. “C’mon, Mal, this is my wife! Zoë Washburn? Remember? Sudden death, body-of-a-tigress and horrible cook, Zoe, remember? You gotta have something better than that suck-ass plan!” “I’m workin’ on it!” Mal said defensively. “You can’t plan everything. Sometimes you have to leave room to improvise. I got the hard parts done. The rest, well, I’ll just have to rely on my innate charm, eloquent delivery and disarming grin.” “Yeah, because that always works out so well,” Wash chided. “Just let me handle it,” Mal insisted. “You did your part with the brilliant piloting, let me do mine with the brilliant . . . bein’ the boss . . . thing . . . I do . . .” he trailed off. Wash rolled his eyes again. “’Eloquent delivery’. I guess it won’t be so bad,” Wash conceded with mock resignation. “Zoe’s a tough girl,” he reasoned. “She’ll do okay in prison. It won’t necessarily be a bad life. First in line at the cafeteria, intimidating her way out of the yucky jobs, plenty of smokes, a couple of bitches – are they bitches in women’s prison?” he asked to no one in particular. “Not mine,” River said. “We were ‘students’ first, then ‘subjects’. And inter-subject fraternization was severely discouraged. We couldn’t even sneak off. Hard to keep a secret in a group of insane telepaths. You couldn’t even masturbate without the whole school knowing. Someone is always willing to snitch on you. As a result I never got to be anyone’s bitch,” she said, sadly. “You aren’t missing much,” Wash admitted. “Wait – you mean there are . . . more like you?” “Duh!” River said mockingly. “I wasn’t the only girl in the school. I was just the best. I hope some of the others got away, too.” “That ain’t a profoundly pleasant thought – not that they’re bad folk, mind,” Mal said. “But even a couple of you crazy kids running around, reading minds, well . . . someone’s gonna abuse that kind o’ power.” “We’re not very tractable – especially me,” she said, insistently. “It’s like you’re a big silver balloon and they just cut the cord to reality, bye-bye, sayonara, adios. After that, when every conscious moment is a struggle against the putrid sewer of the conscious and subconscious mind of everyone you come in contact to to the point where you just fuzz out to keep the stimula to a minimum and hope nothing too strong will blow through you and you hurt yourself, and every night when you sleep you let the balloon slip away and all the twisted demons and hidden perversities of everyone else are filtered through your own overburdened subconscious where it festers and inflicts the worst nightmares that you can’t imagine on you so intensely that they have to drug you comatose to let your body rest between sessions, where they tell you to do stupid, petty things over and over for no good gorram reason and tell you to do everything their way when you know it’s stupid and make you try to talk about what’s happening inside your head when words are so completely inadequate because you’ve experienced it all, remembered it all from other people already and there’s no good gorram reason to condescend to play their stupid games . . . well, we can be a little hard to motivate,” she finished with a sigh. Wash stared at her. “Gee. I bet your pep rallies were a hoot.” “River,” Mal asked, slowly. “Did you take your pill?” “Nope,” River said. “I’m out. I think.” “I’m gonna go set up,” Mal said, hurriedly. “Let’s go get our folks. The sooner,” he said, looking straight at River, “the shiny better.” “We’re almost at zero gee,” Wash noted. “Let’s get back to normal and get it over with. You wanna do the honors?” River nodded, and picked up the mike. “Attention, Travelers: we now return you to your regularly scheduled gravity in three . . . two . . . one . . . sorry, Kaylee.” She hung up the comm.. “She fell on her ankle,” River explained. “She thinks I counted too fast.” “Good job, all,” Mal said, standing. “Now let’s go get to our places and practice our parts. That means you, missy, are in the shuttle.” “Let me just lock down the secondaries, and I’m on my way,” she said. “Soonest. I’m gonna go check on Kaylee.” “You done good, kid,” Wash confided in her after Mal was out of earshot. “Real good. You kept cool and didn’t panic and that made one of us. You like,” he asked, glancing around the cockpit, “all this?” “It was fun,” River agreed, wearing a small grin. “Hey, you wanna, like, sneak up here in the middle of the night when I’m on watch? I’ll let you steer a while. Nothin’ serious, of course, but I think you’d be tickled by it.” “Yeah,” River said, grinning brightly. “Yeah, I really would.” “Don’t tell no one, now,” he said, with mock sternness. “Wouldn’t want to get in trouble with the chief. But . . . you might have some aptitude for the art. I think I could manage to put you in the chair for a while, one of these nights. Since I did it for Master Lei . . .” “That would be shiny!” “ . . . I could show you a few things, how they work and such. Tricks of the trade, so to speak. I’d like that. Out here in the naked Black,” he continued, dramatically, “a man lives or dies on the skills he learns. You have to know things, very, very . . . complicated things. How everything works. You have to know how everything in the cockpit works.” “So . . . how do you work the dinosaurs?” she asked, shyly. Wash stared at her for a moment, then slowly leaned over and protectively put his arm around the cheap plastic toys. “The dinos are mine. Don’t touch the dinos,” he said warningly. “Don’t ever touch the dinos.” “Okay, don’t be a freakboy,” River said, backing away. “But . . . you flew brilliantly. It was . . . it was like a ride through the bowels of Hell!” she said, sinisterly. “You’re . . . kinda into this bowels thing today, huh?” Wash looked out at the starfieled and sighed. “You’re right. Gorram hellride. Thought I’d die any second. I'd of wet my breaches if I'd thought about it. Good time for that sort of thing. Ship spinning out of control, hull moaning like a tortured soul, crazy lightning . . .” “And the gravity, the way it spiked and dipped so one minute you’d be okay and the next you couldn’t breath, and how your arm suddenly weighs like twenty pounds and you’re so close to death you can feel its icy breath . . .” River continued, intently. “That was one to tell the grandkids about. That one will get you free drinks in every bar that believes you. Never had a hellride like that before,” agreed Wash. “It was . . . ” he said, searching for the words. “It was . . .” River nodded. “It was . . . it was great!” she laughed. Wash grinned like an idiot. “It was great, wasn’t it?” They heaved a great satisfied sigh together.