DISCLAIMER: Not my characters, not my 'verse.

Okay so i wrote this this one-shot fic as a worst possible scenario and i liked the end result. Comments would be great.

Khambilo

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“Admiral, we’ve identified the ship,” the callow ensign told the aged Alliance admiral. “It’s a Wolfblazer class. They've been marked for illegal salvage of the Dortmunder.”

Wolfblazer? Similar to Firefly in construction, the admiral thought ruefully. Scavengers. It had been too long since he had been in a vessel that small. For the past years, all he had known was the interior of the large military cruiser of the Alliance.

“Prep the gunships,” the admiral ordered. “We show these vultures no mercy.”

That would be a service to them, the admiral thought to himself. I know these people too well. They have no love for the Alliance, and who could blame them. Thirty years ago a broadwave propelled the Alliance into chaos. Evidence was refuted by Alliance “experts” but no one could ignore what the Alliance had done. A civil war erupted, but ultimately died all within the span of a couple of years. All hail the glorious Alliance.

He was just like these people. He fought for the independents in the first war, and even after the independents had lost, had continued to fight the regime in his own way: crime. Anything he could do to rub them wrong. It was the least he could after what they had done to him. He hated them.

And his hatred consumed him.

His hatred for the Alliance was what drove him.

His hatred for the Alliance had taken the lives of a preacher and a pilot, but more importantly friends. Hatred had caused his first mate to lose the will to live, to fade away. His hatred had made a hero out of a brigand before it snuffed his life out. Hatred drove him to irrationally fight back, and a girl whose mind had been destroyed by the Alliance had been the price to pay. Hatred obliterated the bonds of family, not only the child of a fugitive doctor and a mechanic, but the family he created on board his ship.

His hatred destroyed the only happiness, the only serenity he found, in the woman he loved, the courtesan who traded a life of luxury for a life with him. They murdered her too. He remembered holding her in his arms for the last time, that defensive smile she always had, her spirit resilient though her body was broken. He held her close and screamed to heavens, but nothing would redeem what the Alliance had done, what his hatred for the Alliance had caused.

It was then he was reminded of words he once spoke: “A man comes up against that kind of will, only way to deal with it, is to become it.” And like the man from the derelict so many years ago, he was forced to watch his family, his life slowly be stripped away from him.

Of course when he said that, he was referencing the Reavers, not the Alliance. Now he made no distinction. They were both monsters.

When the day came, a lone man full of hate, surrounded by Feds, they offered him an ultimatum.

“…only way to deal with it, is to become it.”

And so he did. Not as a way out, not because he believed Alliance’s ideals, not because he was broken, but because of his hate had already made him into one of them: soulless men whose identities have long since escaped them.

The Wolfblazer trailed across the screen momentarily before the gunships fired on. It never stood a chance, Wolfblazer was a only transport class.

As it erupted into flames before him, he let a smile come to his face. He would be preventing the pain of all consuming hate for them by destroying them now.

If only I had that chance, he thought.

“Target eliminated,” the callow ensign intoned.

The admiral smiled. “Resume course.”

“Aye, Admiral Reynolds.”