Yeah, it's been a few months since I added to this series (I was doing robotics competitions). If you haven't read Liberty (6 parts) and/or Aquaphobe (5 parts), I'd suggest you find them and read them (they can be found in the fanfic section here) as it explains some of the things in this story. Disclaimer: anything recognizable is property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, etc. The story, however, is mine. Also, I had to take some creative liberties, but only on stuff not explained in the series. I also used my own translator for the Mandarin, so it may be off (although it's still comical). On to the story:

Yeah, I don’t sleep much. The Alliance made me pretty well. A regular human needs eight hours of sleep to operate efficiently. I only need four, and can still operate well on as little as two. This morning, I awoke to the sound of Libby running startup procedures on the bridge. It wasn’t quite sunrise, but you could see some light coming from the horizon. “I see you got some sleep.” Libby continued her task. “Did you?” “I don’t sleep.” Libby moved to the other side of the bridge. “You know what I mean.” I got up off the chair. “No.” Now Libby started pressing buttons where she was. “Bill and I were prepping the engine for a couple hours-” “It took that long?” I started helping her with the procedures. “Yeah. Right fluid coupler was jammed. Took us forever to unjam it.” She went down to navigation. “Anyhow, afterwards, while everybody was asleep, I made sure we were set everywhere else. Ship says she’s fine. Then I came in here and found you asleep, and decided I should run startup procedures and-” “Okay, I gotcha. We lift in five.” I followed Libby down to navigation. “Is everyone else awake?” “Yep. They’re all in the cargo bay waiting for you.” Libby exited navigation. “Go figure,” I said following her out. “The perfect weapon is the last one up.” I went down the stairs to the catwalk overlooking the cargo bay with Libby at my side. Already assembled was the rest of my motley crew. “Alright, we’re lifting momentarily. The transport should have landed fifteen minutes ago. All crew should be off five minutes ago. We should be there in seven minutes. Tobias, Serra, Libby, you three have six minutes to move the cargo. They’ll be back two minutes after we’re gone. Bill, you give me enough power to hold for ten minutes. We’ll need a place to sail to on the fly. We land, hold ‘till sundown, and deliver the goods. Simple. I hope.” Bill was making his way up the stairs to the catwalk. “You hope?” “Oh don’t worry.” I went upstairs. “Something will go wrong. It always does.” Bill came up behind me. “Do I still get paid if things go wrong?” “Just get to the engine room.” I went to the bridge. Things were ready to go. Within a minute, I got a go from Bill in the engine room. I grabbed the yoke. With the engines whirring, Liberty arose. We had a course set that would take us from the outskirts of the city to the spaceport where we came in earlier. It was all going good. We came up to a light transport. It was a Hai Tun class ship. I pulled up right next to it. Monitors indicated my cargo bay door was open. Then, the ship powered up. Serra commed me from the open cargo bay. “Eddie, it’s taking off!” I could see on the monitors that my crew had decided to close the cargo bay door for their safety. A sight of a small transport lifting no more than twenty feet away from me filled my window. Then, it went forward at full speed. I pushed hard on the throttle. Liberty started pursuing the transport in a direction leading away from the city and out to the canyons of Ares. “Bill, new plan!” His voice came over the comm. “Why are we moving forward?!?” “No clue.” I kept my sights on the transport. “Just get my engines back the way they were.” “You know I can’t do that in flight.” Bill was sounding frantic. “We’d have to land.” Of course, with our catch running, I had no intention of doing that. I followed it for a minute until we reached a set of canyons. Now Libby was on the bridge. “I can deploy weapons. Bring it down the hard way.” “That’d destroy the catch.” I looked briefly at a monitor, then back out the window. “Next idea.” Bill interrupted over the comm. “Eddie, we gotta land.” It was bad news. We had now entered a wide canyon and were following the transport through it. “Okay, Libby, you take care of things here.” I got up and ran out of the bridge. Turning left at the intersection, I ran down the stairs to the catwalk over the cargo bay. “Eddie, what’s going on?” Tobias was in front of me. “We’re taking the shuttle.” I yelled down to Serra. “Come on.” I ran into the shuttle followed by Tobias and Serra a few seconds behind me. Climbing into the pilot’s seat, I could see us coming to a narrow part of the canyon. Liberty came to an abrupt stop as it put down its landing gear. But we had just disengaged from her and were in pursuit of the transport carrying our goods. Well, they weren’t ours, but that’s not the point. “Tobias, G-Gun. Now!” “We’re out of ammo for that,” came the reply from the back. “Oh yeah.” I pressed a few buttons in front of me. They deployed my shotgun. “Whoever this is, they’re good.” The transport took a hard left into a smaller, twisting part of the canyons. We followed. I myself took a few potshots towards the engines, trying to bring it down safely. The pilot of the transport was dodging my shots while still piloting through the winding canyons. Serra somehow made it to the front of the shuttle and sat down in the seat next to me. “Perhaps we should call for support.” “Who’d help us?” I asked, my attention still on flying through the now extremely winding canyon. “Perhaps Liberty could send some fireworks to aid us.” Serra pushed some buttons in front of her which brought up a map of the canyons. “What’s the range on the big cannon?” “It’ll hit anything in this canyon, if that’s what you’re worried about.” I pulled out the comm. “Libby, you getting thi-” Serra yanked the comm away from me. “Give me a shot here.” She keyed in some coordinates. “On my mark.” We twisted and turned through more canyons, all the while, the canyon was getting narrower and more twisted. Simply put, the pilot in the transport was better than me. Talk about a hit to the ego. “Fire!” Serra’s demand shook my attention a little. At least enough to make my next hard right a little harder. We nearly crashed into the canyon wall when the next left came a little wider than expected. But we were now pursuing the transport through a narrow straightaway. A perpendicular split was a short distance ahead. Not knowing which way the transport would go, I geared for anything. What happened next was suprising. The transport was angled as if it was going to go left. But it never got the chance. Apparently, the shot Serra called in was aimed right at the wall directly ahead of us at the split (which makes me wonder where a scientist picked up military strategy, but I digress). It was a very soft section of rock, and it slid very easily. The rockslide hit the roof of the transport, blanketing it. And they were big rocks. I don’t know if anything got shattered on the transport, but the entire front half was covered in canyon rock. Plain and simple, it wasn’t moving anymore. This allowed me to pull up to its cargo bay door in the rear and land. Tobias was the first out, followed by Serra. They were looking over the area. It looked like the hard landing cracked the cargo bay door open, and those two were trying to lift it open. I commed home to Liberty. “Nice shot. Can you guys sail here?” Libby voice came back over. “Yeah, we’re moving now. There’s a problem though. There’s chatter on the Fed line about a stolen transport headed out our way, no doubt it’s our catch they’re talking about.” I looked out the window, watching Serra and Tobias finally bar open the door to the transport’s cargo bay. “Alright, stay in the canyon as much as possible. I want you to avoid radar and sat. Take it easy. We’ll run a sweep of the transport. Get ready to load and leave quickly.” I turned the comm off and joined Serra and Tobias in the now open transport. “Goods are here, lad.” Tobias had noticed the boxes throughout the small cargo bay. “Some good news.” I tossed the Peacemaker I had on me to Serra. “Make sure no one leaves this boat.” Serra left the cargo bay while Tobias pulled out the Winchester he happened to have on him at the time. We went in further to a door which led to the rest of the ship. Tobias went first with me right behind him. I checked the engine room. Nothing. Tobias checked the quarters. Nothing. That left the cockpit. We both entered. Half of the cockpit was crushed under the rocks, but there was no sign of anyone, dead or alive. This led us to believe that whomever was flying this thing had gotten off in the confusion. Which meant… “Serra!” Tobias and I both clicked as we ran out of the cockpit. Running down the hallway and out to the cargo bay, we saw nothing. When we exited the cargo bay, we saw Serra holding the gun I gave her at the pilot of the ship. Getting closer, we saw that pilot was female, and that Serra was well in control of the situation. Tobias aimed his gun at the pilot. “Lass, you have no clue how much trouble you’ve caused us.” “Lower the guns.” Serra and Tobias complied. “Tobias is right though. You’ve brought us more trouble then I generally like on a given day.” I grabbed the pilot by the shoulders and turned her to face me. The face I came across was utterly shocking. It was the same 16 year old I saved in the strip club earlier. “Okay… this is different.” She spoke. “Look, I’m sorry I took your ship. I saw it unguarded, and I needed to get off this fei-wu tong of a planet and-” “Wasn’t our ship.” I looked up out of the canyon to see if any ships were near. “We were just stealing from it. At least until you flew it away from us. Which begs the question-” A loud roar interrupted me. Liberty appeared from around that bend. It flew over us, turned a 180°, and landed, all the while kicking up dust around us. The cargo bay doors opened as the ramp came down. “Alright, let’s move this stuff.” I walked into the downed transport’s cargo bay. “Fast.” “What about the lass here?” Tobias still had a grip on his gun. “Have her help.” I grabbed one of the boxes of arms. “It’s the least she can do.” “Libby’s right, you know.” Tobias holstered his gun and grabbed a box. “You are crazy.” Crazy or not, we were five minutes and loaded. I was in Liberty’s cargo bay putting the last box away when I got something over the loudspeaker. “Alliance Scoutships, incoming!” I grabbed the P.A. and responded. “Leave. We’ll take the shuttle and join up later.” I ran out of the cargo bay. Serra, Tobias, and the mystery girl were still outside. “Into the shuttle!” The girl spoke up. “Wait, what are-” “No time for argument.” I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into the shuttle behind me. Jumping into the pilot’s seat, I started up the shuttle. Liberty had already lifted and left. They were safe. We were not. Scoutships are quick. I’m pretty sure they never detected Liberty, but they sure as hell detected us. Light anti-personnel machine gun fire came from a Scoutship’s only weapon. But the shuttle had just lifted. A second Scoutship came into view. I pushed on the throttle, taking us back through the canyons, the Scoutships on tail. We got lucky. One of the Scoutships took the first left a little too hard. Its left side hit the corner of the canyon wall, and the ship skidded to the ground. But I had no luck shaking the second one. So I turned to the girl sitting next to me. “New game plan. You fly. Shake that damn thing off of us.” They say females make better pilots than males. Simply put, they have better reflexes. A girl can train during her teenage years, and easily find a job as a pilot out on the rim for many years after. It’s true. The girl and I switched places. She was able to shake the Scoutship about ten hard turns later when she feigned right and went left at the last second. The Scoutship followed the feign, and couldn’t right itself. We went fast in the opposite direction and never looked back. And a few minutes later, we were tucked away in Liberty’s wing, not an Alliance ship to be heard.