Firefly - Away and Back Again

by: Smorgy

Part 2: The Crazed and the Evil

-------------------------------------------------- Mal, looking at the screen holding the capture of The Operative says, “What exactly is goin’ on about down there? We were lookin’ to set this boat down and fix the lazy craftsmanship of your people cause’ my boat to go all skelter and the like."

“I’m sorry, I haven’t been entirely honest with you yet about the Tams. Seeing as this is certainly my end, I see no harm in –” The Operative turned his head from the screen and coughed, interrupting this new information. The wall he faced splashed with spatter as the blood dripped down the wounds on his face and over his mouth. “When I was searching for River, I came across something. Something I wasn’t quite sure of what exactly it was.”

Zoe and Simon stepped up the stairs to the bridge and stopped few paces from Mal. “What is this, why are you talking to… him?” Zoe said as she pointed at the screen.

“Seems there was a tussle, and now this man has some new intel regarding our little ninja here,” Mal says as he reaches over and pats River’s head.

“Mal, I don’t have long I fear. Those men are here now. They killed everyone aboard The Colbert, my old ship. They have one of, one of your men, his coffin,” The Operative said, just before he saw something. He shut off his communicator and struggled his body up to limping.

Zoe’s face wrenched, “Those yín chóng, what are they doing with him?” her mind immediately lept to her late husband.

River had reverted to inconsolable; she had shrunk out of the co-pilot’s chair and into the corner against a grate. She was shaking and repeating over and over, “Hands of blue, two by two.”

“We cannot go back there, to them, Capt’n. River is just starting to come back to me, I can’t lose her again. We have to go. Now,” Simon barked, now crouched over with his sister, facing Mal.

Zoe’s shotgun unholstered and pointed at him before he was through his first few words. “I don’t care who is walkin’ about, they have my Wash, and we are goin back down there.” Her weapon cocked and her finger moved to the trigger. Her emotions raging inside of her, questions unasked, but it is not like she cared, she didn’t care that it might be something else, that it might be someone else.

Mal’s face shot back and forth, the 2 new ‘Captains’ of the ship had completely ignored him and his wishes, conveying their orders as if they were fact. “What am I? Molded protein over here? This is still my ship, and on my boat, I give the orders.” He said as he pulled back the focus of the room toward him. Zoe’s weapon still aimed at Simon’s head.

“He said everyone was dead save a few Mal, and if you don’t take us back down –“ Zoe threatened as she shifted her shotgun towards the Captain.

“You best change your aim,” Mal’s expression prepared, his hand edging back the front of his old brown tattered coat toward his pistol.

“What’s all the yellin’ ‘bout?” Jayne’s body turned around the corner as he stepped over the threshold. He saw the gun pointed at Mal and he reached for his own.

“Stow it,” Zoe decreed as she pulled out a silvery pistol and pointed it at Jayne, all the while her gaze fixed on Malcolm.

Mal changed tactics and pulled his hand away from his coat, slowly moving them skyward. “’Fore we all get shot, let’s take a quick moment to hash this whole situation out. We do seem to be needin’ some repairs, and they do got one of our folk dug up. He was my friend as well, and no way those ruttin’ feds will have at his corpse without us at least takin into account our options.”

“Mal,” Zoe says still at the ready.

He sees the look in her eyes as well as Simon prepared to make a further mess of the situation. “Simon, tend to your sister. We can’t go on without repairs anyway, and we’ll be found right soon if they get that bloodied up clown shoe down there to talk. When folk of ours are put to rest, we won’t let them be mucked about with.”

Simon was growing restless, his nervous knee bouncing and his brain racing. He couldn’t let his sister be taken back to the alliance, or whoever it was hunting them. They would torture her for years, hurt his favorite and only sister, his best friend and over the past 4 years his only obsession. His tryst and newly growing relationship with Kaley didn’t even enter into his mind. His plans not fully formed but he only knew that he had to stop this from happening, that he would have to attack Zoe and remove her weapons, then stop Mal from returning the ship for repairs.

River’s heart fluttered, she could feel his haste, his impending death, and the crushing emotion that Kaley would feel after his loss. It was so powerful in her, the passion and freshly resolved sexual tension between the mechanic and her brother. River sat forward moving her back from the cold grate and reached her arms forward. She pulled Simon off balance and forced him to tumble into her arms. Her voice panicked, “Simon, don’t do it, don’t do it. Stay and sit with me. Don’t do it.”

Jayne had jumped behind the frame of the door just out of Zoe’s line of sight. He intently listened to the goings on ready to jump in and resolve some fresh violence. Inara’s footsteps echoed faintly and alerted Jayne that she was walking around the corridor behind him headed to the bridge almost as she was upon him. He reached his hand back to stop her from entering the fray, misjudging her distance; she was in fact far closer than he had anticipated. His palm open and fingers outstretched to say stop instead shared a different message. The message Inara received was that Jayne’s hand was on her breast. His head snapped to face her and as soon as he realized, a smile crept up on only one side of his mouth, the other half trying to hold back his giddiness. “Well hey there, Inara.”

She expected him to retract his hand within a moment of realizing, but as it did not, she slapped it down and recoiled her elegant body.

“As much as I’d like to stay and talk about my hand and your boobs, we got some trouble up there, some message about the feds got one of our men’s coffin unburied and the like. Zoe has gone ape shit on the Capt’n and has got guns pointing out all directions on the folk up there,” Jayne informed Inara, the perplexed look on her face still unresolved. --------------------------------------------------

A room illuminated only by the screens and their projected light flashed in front of a mutated man. His body deformed to have 3 arms, each with their 5 fingers, long and elegant. He was overweight, but not just a little, and sitting on a regal computer chair, a rolling Lazyboy equipped with a built in bevy of computer accessories and compartments for food and drink. The once light almond colored suede fabric was worn at the seat and back and nearly brown all over. He reached to his right for a can of cola. On its label was a blue rising sun over a white background, no words or nutrition facts, the brand so trusted it didn’t need one. Behind him against the walls were containers stacked 5 high and just as wide filled with hundreds of cans of the stuff.

Still in his Stegosaurus boxers he took his middle arm, projecting from where most men’s left nipple would have been and patted a table to his side for a wave transponder. “Hey bro sup, can you like… put me on with that guy I’m always talkin to.” The man said, holding up the device to his mouth.

“One moment sir, I will put you on hold,” the Blue Sun’s special interest secretary responded. *A catchy tune comes up with a commercial over the top of it* When yer mouth is thirsty and you’ve had a hard day, Reach for the only one, the one with the blue sun From the…

The song is interrupted by a monotone man, “What have you found? Tell me, Brodin, is it her?”

“Yo like what’s up yer day been treatin ya squeatin ya?” Brodin asked.

“I am interested in the girl, have you found her,” he asked annoyed with the analyst.

“Yo, I’m feelin’ ya. Yeah, yeah, the Alliance got a message from an Operative and uh. Uh, oh yeah, he was like, ‘Bro boss I found em, but they aren’t dangerous anymore, so I was all hey guards, let em go.’ But then he was like, ‘well we let most of em go, but like a couple were all dead and shit from the reavers and I stabbed one of em’ last night.’” Brodin was feeling underappreciated that Blue Sun never commented on how awesome he was.

“And where was this wave broadcasted from,” the Agent asked, he had always felt some sense of annoyance whenever he had to talk to Brodin.

“Yea, it’s on a moon under like a, ion cloud. Moon called Sygnus,” even though the Agent never called him radicool, he knew he was, or at least Blue Sun always payed him like he was.

End Part 2