The inspiration machine was on tonight, so here's the short-awaited sequel to The Other Side of Serenity. Viva la Browncoats.

------------------------------- "Woman, pour me some more gorram beer."

Jian-Ku gave her husband a sidelong glance. Never a classic beauty to begin with, her nose had been broken in a long-ago brawl from the service days and never had been properly set, leaving it with a slight leftward orientation. It was her eyes that put most people off, though. When they settled down from their continual roaming and locked in on a person, it was unsettlingly like being under the crosshairs of the sniper rifle she'd carried back in the service.

"Try again. Woman, pour me some more gorram beer, what?" she said. There was an edge to her tone, not from their perpetual banter. Nobody in the booth had much reason to be excited about this auspicious occasion.

"Woman, pour me some more gorram beer because you're closer to the gorram pitcher." he retorted. A crooked grin passed over his weathered face, prematurely aged from exposure to harsh UV radiation he'd endured in the service. His fair blond hair was just starting to show gray streaks, also premature for a man barely past his thirty-second year.

Cafferty turned his attention away from the growing celebration going on near the bar to watch how this was going to play out. Jian-Ku bared her teeth and reached down, digging into his inner thigh with strong fingers further hardened by two years of hardscrabble farming. "When was the last time you told me you loved me, darling?"

Zip was staring straight ahead, eyes locked in the perpetually wide stare of a former benthamph addict. Typically, he'd started drinking in the morning before the usual weekend get-together. Cafferty, sensing the oncoming torrent that Zip was locally notorious for, elbowed him and nodded toward the growing drama. Kellerman squirmed and made 'ah ah ah' noises, finally relenting. "Light of my life, purtiest creature I've ever seen... ah... could you PLEASE pour me some more gorram beer?"

We talk like locals, Cafferty thought. Dress like locals, talk like locals, spend weekends in this dump of a bar like locals. Anybody passing through would think we lived here all our lives.

Everybody but the real locals, that is.

From the next booth over, Miloslaw leaned across the seat to grouse about the crowd around the bar. "Look at 'em. You'd think they'd won the war all by themselves." He had the booth to himself instead of sitting in front of their table. This was a group that didn't believe in sitting with their backs to any doors.

Miloslaw was a cipher, the unknown element in their little group. Jian-Ku, Kellerman and Cafferty had come through the war together, together in the same regiment through the most brutal fighting in the last six months before the Browncoats had called it quits. Cafferty and Kellerman had actually been together longer than that, with Jian-Ku being a late addition to their platoon. She fit right in from the beginning, having seen hard service on other fronts and was obviously a topnotch professional at her craft.

Zip was a former fighter jock, one who probably could've stayed on after post-war drawdown or at least found himself a good job in civilian life if he hadn't contracted a particularly nasty form of ear-rot from one of the dustballs his squad deployed on. A rare disease, it was initially mis-diagnosed by overworked naval medical staff and left improperly treated until his sense of balance was essentially destroyed. Lamenting his lost love was his main hobby.

Miloslaw, on the other hand, was tightlipped. He knew his way around a fight, sent all the right signals, but never had confessed as to just how he came across his knowledge. Cafferty had a pretty good idea, though he'd never shared it with anyone. He'd given Miloslaw a booster injection a while back, and tattooed on Miloslaw's arm was a red skull surrounded by blue concertina wire. Once upon a time Cafferty had seen an identical tattoo on the arm of a sergeant serving in a pathfinder unit, the boys and girls who led the way in for planetary invasion forces.

Cafferty had been musing, and managed to miss the start of Zip's favorite rant.

"Coulda joined the Browncoats, y'know. They were paying top-rate for qualified civilian fliers. Could've had a squadron of my own."

"Could've." Kellerman said, sipping on his newly refilled mug. "And would've gotten your ass shot off. Flying old junk and outnumbered what, eight to one by the time it was over?" His cold logic rarely made a dent in Zip's musings, and this time was no different. "What the hell did the Alliance ever do for me?" Zip said, the tears welling in his eyes. The only good thing was that by the time he was ready to start crying, he was usually a good distance toward passing out. Kellerman looked like he'd just bit into a lemon.

"It's a point." Jian-Ku said bitterly. "'Muster out to your fifty acres and a whole new start!'" she mimicked the ads viciously. "Fifty acres of worthless, rocky land in places where everyone damn well never lets you forget why you're here and why they're having to fly an Alliance flag."

Cafferty covered his embarrassment by quickly raising his mug for a drink. Jian-Ku and Kellerman were barely managing to stay one step ahead of the creditors. For his own part, any person with even basic medical skills could make a relatively decent living on the frontier. He had no delusions of being a for-real doctor, but he could stitch wounds, set bones, and had gotten a good deal of practice in the commonly required art of extracting bullets. He'd offered to help out more than once, but the couple wouldn't hear of it. Not anymore, anyway. They were less into his wallet than they were the bank's, but it was the principle of the matter

"Yeah, and I get a wife who gets drunk, comes home and beats me." Kellerman added, breaking the tension. Jian-Ku affectionately ruffled his hair.

Miloslaw chimed in. "I have it on good authority that our heroic lieutenant over there spent the war running a fleet PX." he said, nodding toward the bar again. Kellerman snorted. "Hey Caff, how do you think those kids would have humped it over on Kassa Hill?"

"Fuck Kassa Hill." declared Jian-Ku. "They would have been great in the Valley. Heads so dense, the shots would have just bounced right off."

For anybody who had been there, there was only one Valley. Zip slumped forward, prompting both Cafferty and Kellerman to grab for his mug. Getting tangled up, they failed to capture it before he bumped it with his flopping arm and sent it pouring across the table. Everyone but Zip made a quick exit from the booth to avoid the flood. Kellerman chuckled, then glanced over at the entrance.

"Now what the hell are they doing, coming in here?" he said, a cross between confusion and anger in his voice.

At the bar, one of the young troopers was loudly announcing "Let's hear it for Unification Day!" When he didn't get the raucous response he was looking for, he looked around in confusion, then suddenly stiffened. Cafferty couldn't see what was going on through the mass of bodies, until he caught a glimpse of a brown coat.

"Fucking suicidal." Kellerman continued, grabbing an old towel from the next table to mop up the mess. Cafferty tended to agree, but he was distracted by the flashes of long, long legs he was seeing behind the browncoat. Women tended to be in short supply out on the frontier, and not much of what was available in the area were terribly interested in bunking with one of the former occupation troops. Not that he had much hopes for making it with anyone associated with a former Independent (and likely to be one herself.) But those were legs worth looking at, certainly.

"It's about to get warm in here." opined Miloslaw, sliding forward to the edge of his seat and hunkering down. Indeed, as the Browncoat made his way to the bar, Cafferty could see the former revelers tensing and working themselves up to a confrontation. By his stance, the Browncoat was in the same frame of mind. He turned to order a drink, and gave Cafferty a good look at his face. Suddenly the world reeled, and he staggered back against the Kellerman.

"Hey, hey, what's up buddy?" his old friend asked, holding a hand out to steady him. Cafferty could swear there was a reek of blood and ozone in the air, the old familiar smells of battle.

"K-Dog." he whispered, using Kellerman's nickname for the first time in a couple of years. "Remember that Browncoat? The one on the hill that I told you about?"

"Yeah. Turned out to be a sergeant. Spazzle and Turner brought him in when we were processing them." Kellerman stepped aside and took a look. "That him?" Cafferty could only nod. "Small 'verse." Kellerman grunted, before turning back to finish up with the table. The Browncoat was smiling at one of the kids who'd stepped up to confront him, making some sort of comment before tossing off his drink. The other troopers were positioning themselves, and the woman had her hand on a beer bottle. Jian-Ku rapped the back of her knuckles on Kellerman's broad back. "Look alive, husband."

All at once the former Browncoats exploded into action. The man suckerpunched one of the troopers in front of him, and the woman (Cafferty was sure from her bearing that she'd been in the service too.) shattered the bottle in her hand over the nearest available head.

The chaos was severe, but localized. Two idiot Browncoats taking on seven young troops and their lieutenant.

"That's why those gorram fools lost." Kellerman said, bitterly. "Too many of us, too damn few of them."

It was a galling admission on his part, but one that nobody at the table disagreed with. Individually, the pair were obviously superior to their opponents in the fine art of breaking tables and heads. They worked well together, with the practiced ease of long association. However, they were being forced back toward the pool tables in the corner, scattering the regular bar crowd away from their melee. The man was warding off two troopers with a cue, and the woman had taken advantage of the Alliance-friendly bar being the only one in town with real, solid balls on the table. She held one in her hand and put one trooper down for the count with a crack across the head. Even so, their opponents were similarly arming themselves with chairs and bottles, and things were promising to get real ugly in short order.

"You know." Jian-Ku said thoughtfully, "I always wanted to beat the shit out of an officer." Kellerman barked out a laugh and then, strangely, everyone glanced at Miloslaw. He slid out of his seat and dusted his knees off, then gave them all an utterly frightening smile. Cafferty was very sure that wherever the man had been, whatever he'd done, he was just glad that a man like Miloslaw had been on their side.

"It's been a while. Wouldn't mind seeing if I still remember how." Miloslaw said. Kellerman laughed and they moved toward the fight. It was old times all over again, a rememberance of a savage time when they were insane enough to fight just to prove that they were still alive. It was as if their entrance to the fray was the signal the locals needed that it would be okay for them to join in against the hated Alliance troops.

Tomorrow, they'd all pay for it. Jail-time, harrassment, more tightening of the screws. But today, today they were once again striking back, fighting the good fight.

One of the troopers was on the ground, trying to get back to his feet. Cafferty took a savage joy in the cracking sound that came from the impact of his boot into the trooper's abdominal region. Couple of ribs at least, and one more down for the count. If some people got themselves good and busted up, well, business would be good for the next few days. Once the entire bar turned on them, the troopers didn't have much of a chance beyond beating a fighting withdrawal. For all the contempt shown for them by the veterans, they didn't do too bad a job of it. Four of them were able to walk under their own power by the time they were through the doors and windows. The locals jeered and hollered and congratulated themselves on their victory. It was a small and petty victory, but it had been a good long time since they'd had any wins on their side of the ledger. Kellerman shook his fist with a rueful expression on his face and yelled to Cafferty "Never hit a man in the head with a closed fist!" sounding so much like Sergeant-Major Ulbrich that Cafferty nearly fell over laughing. Still grinning like an idiot, he made his way over to the Browncoat. Elbowing his way through the surrounding crowd busy congratulating the man on his courage, he looked up into the the Browncoat's eyes.

"Sergeant." he said, starting and then stopping. Suddenly, it was back with him again, the Valley was, and all the frivolity died in his soul. The man stopped smiling him at the mention of his former military rank, and intense eyes bored into his. He swallowed and started again.

"Sergeant... I was in the Valley. Uh. Corpsman Kevin Cafferty, 13th Alliance Jaegers. I. When. When the ships came down, I was roughly a couple of hundred meters from your position. I saw you there, and..." He stopped. The Browncoat was giving him a look that reminded him uncomfortably of what he'd seen in Miloslaw's face before they'd joined the fight. Two peas in a pod, born killers.

"Were you now?" the Browncoat said, then looked closer. "I remember you now. Medico on the other side of the ridge. Didn't recognize you, what with no helmet and jackboots." The offhanded way he said it chilled Cafferty. Did the Browncoat recognize him the way Jian-Ku sometimes mentioned knowing people over the scope, when she was deep in the cups and about to pass out? She talked about how intimate it was, lining up the shot, knowing that you were about to put somebody out of this 'verse for good. The thought that this Browncoat might have looked at him through a scope, even just a spotting scope, made Cafferty feel very, very small. Cold sweat ran down his back. All at once, the Browncoat's face shifted to a friendly expression, like turning on a light in a dark room. "Well then, Corpsman, you and yours did us a good turn today. Mind if I buy the three of you a drink?"

Cafferty started to object and point out there was four of them, but when he looked around he realized that Miloslaw had disappeared from the premises.

The tension never let out of the odd scene, former enemies still watching each other as they shared a quick beer on the Browncoat's dime. But for a brief time, five survivors of the grinder at Serenity Valley could share a moment of peace with the only people in the 'verse who could ever understand.