Action! Adventure! Sex! Guns! Humour! Reverberations.

Disclaimer: these characters don't belong to me. I'm just messing with them a bit. ___

Wash slammed his fist on the Serenity’s pilot console, sending a brontosauras skittering atop the nav monitor. The toy dinosaur ended up on its back, legs meekly flailed roofward, at that moment looking every bit as helpless as Wash felt. He’d arrived on the bridge too late. With Serenity on autopilot, the intruders’ ship’s pilot obviously had plenty of time to line up an efficient trajectory. A course leaving ample opportunity to engage magnetic grapplers well before Wash, or for that matter, anyone else, could react to the proximity alarm and scramble up to the bridge to effect evasive manoeuvers. Which, clearly, was the point. Didn’t make Wash feel any better. And from here it looked like ... oh man! a clapped-out Trans-U! This wasn’t happening! Humped. Well and truly humped. Allright. Precious time taken for a deep breath. Then another. Wash knew he was at his best when calm. So, one forced calmness: pilot’s trick. A fast scan across the monitors.... Deng yi miao, fore portcam’s got a good view on the U’s bulkhead, closing rapidly. Right! First priority: alert the crew. Wash got on the comm, shipwide broadcast mode. “Uh, folks,” he began, even as he realized maybe some sense of urgency might be appropriate. Screaming just might do. “Full Alert! People, we’re gonna be boarded! Grapplers, the whole gorram shebang! Looks like they’ll be comin’ at us through the cargo bay! Repeat....” Wash repeated variations of this message three times, nearly swallowing the mic with each announcement. Damn thing would’ve been imbedded in his maw when the Trans-U whoompfed! against Serenity’s hull, but that the force of the impact sent him tumbling out of his chair. The full gamut of flashing monitor alerts lit up the console. Dozens of warning lights began pulsing frenetically from the ship’s systems controllers arrayed along the bridge walls. Above and all around him, blinking reflections bounced into Wash’s vision at a furious rate, rendering his climb back to the pilot’s chair as a stroboscopic series of stop-step movements. A babble of automated voice warnings competed for his attention in two languages, insinuated amidst the angry buzzing pulse of the proximity alert and the whooping cry of the nav systems failure alarm. Through the stairwell came an aarfy timbre of yelping beagles and... pounding footsteps. “Wash! What in the gorram name of....” This was all Zoe Warren could yell out before the Trans-U again rammed Serenity. Zoe felt the impact as a jarring of her bones, forcing her off balance. Trained reflexes enabled her to transmute a near certain tumble into an athletic and successful, if not entirely graceful, dive for the pilot’s chair, which she grabbed and clung to for support. Position didn’t give her much of a view on things. Zoe lifted her head above the back of the chair, shouting, “What’d we hit?” The grinding shreik of the ships’ collission made Wash’s teeth sing. A sound not unlike those he had heard whales making, when as a kid he’d visited the famous aquarium on New Melbourne, only with the volume upped by an order of magnitude. “One big fish, dear. Only it has hit us.” Wash was unable to elaborate just yet. In full do-or-die mode, he’d considered his limited options, that is, stay put or tear away, and opted for breaking contact. Worry later about what damage that was going to do to Serenity’s skin. Yeah, later, preferably at some safe remove waayyy away from this particular spatial coordinate. Reaching up, Wash toggled three switches to kill the safeties: standard procedure. Putting into play his unerring instinct for the unexpected and extremely dangerous manoeuver, the pilot began yawing his ship toward the intruder. Yep, good bet those gou cao de creeps were gonna crap their drawers when they figured out Serenity was actually rolling over their ship. Hah! Below him, something else went boom. Set off yet another alarm. Seemed amazing there were any more left to squeal. But there you had it, sure as... ta ma de! An atmo breach! Amidst the din, Kaylee’s voice chirped over the comm, immediately reminding Wash of that other complication he shoulda’ been thinking about.

___

Wiping her forehead with a greasy cuff, Kaylee closed the cover on the port jet controller. The engines were set for full burn. Yet the mechanic felt in her heart that it weren’t right. Even back here in the engine bay the groans vibrating through the hull spoke clear as a bell to the structural stresses Serenity was enduring. Still she got on the comm, real calm-like, considering the circumstances, letting Wash know that things was ‘bout as ready as can be. Serenity lurched. The floor beaneath Kaylee’s feet shifted as a bulkhead strut smacked her forehead. The way it seemed walls moved when the ship changed direction so fast the grav boots got trumped. Okay, that hurt, enough to bring out stars in a room without windows. Odd, but it was gettin’ a might breezy in here.... Her heart were to like stop beatin’ when she figured out they was losin’ atmo, fast. Oh deargod but she had to move! Smacking up on the comm switch, panicking now, Kaylee shouted, “Wash, where’s the breach?! I gotta know what to shut down!”

___

Uncharacteristically, Zoe was stunned. Momentarily. Then understood with perfect clarity what her husband just learned. He was frantically cycling through the external displays while spitting out a viscious self-deprecating diatribe in the foulest, most obscene Chinglish she’d ever heard. Which was no mean feat, given she’d spent time amongst all manner of backwater born soldiers in all manner of horrid situations. Starting with a riff comparing his brain to gangrenous donkey entrails, then degenerating from there. She was like to agree with his assessment. Soon as she heard the atmo alarm responding to what was certainly an explosion belowdecks, Zoe knew what it was caused it. Uh-huh, there it was, main cargo bay screen. The view shut tight Wash’s trap, stopped dead all his physical activity. Decent resolution, they could see droplets of hydraulic fluid emerge from the hold, bursting in vacuum. The cargo door hanging like a jigsaw piece not quite fitting the picture, remnants of tubing snaking away toward a backdrop formed by the intruder vessel. Obvious cause, clear result: Wash hadn’t considered, or had plain forgotten about explosive grapplers, set to blow when snapped apart, like when a snagged ship undocked. His very heroic attempt at breaking free had instead crippled Serenity. Zoe briefly allowed herself fear, frustration. She welcomed fury, white hot, burning all her emotions down to a paradoxically calm essence that would fuel her actions. First: assessment mode, mind working hard even as by demeanour she appeared utterly relaxed. On another monitor she could see extending from the Trans-U a cargo sized airlock passageway, should cover the whole gorram exterior. Well, that would near enough solve the atmo leak problem, for now anyway. Also meant there’d shortly be hostiles coming through. Lil’ Kaylee’s voice was booming over the comm, girl could bellow like a diva when she had a notion. Zoe stabbed the send switch, nearly kayoing Wash in the process. “We’re on it, Kaylee! Get everyone together. Right now! And tell ‘em to get armed!” Zoe grabbed Wash by his elbow, unceremoniously hauling the pilot out of his chair. “You’re done here, sweetcakes,” she said, shoving him toward the stairs. “Need you with me, to fight. So, we need guns.” “Yeah, getting that,”, muttered Wash, knowing he was in for serious atonement. As Zoe rushed by him heading down toward the armoury closet, he paused, shook his head, squared his shoulders. “Let’s do this.” Wash ran down the stairs. Gaining the catwalk above the cargo hold he was dowsed by a gush from an overhead sprinkler. Stopped him dead in his tracks, blinking, putting up a hand in mock salute gesture above his eyebrows to stem the stream flowing along his face, struggling to focus on what was happening below. Mercifully, though with an ear popping thud, the wind stopped blowing. With all else competing in his brain, he’d just now fully comrehended that they’d been losing atmo. Of course! Damn walkway must’ve engaged on the hull, providing a seal. Focus... paying attention now. Inner airlock door was wide open, had made room for their game of hoops. Not so good to have left it like that. Captain’d be all kinds of pissed if he’d have noticed. Any case, classic good news / bad news scenario, what with having air meant the bad guys were coming in sooner, rather than not so soon. Wash turned about, heading for their boarding quarters, figuring that was closer than the armoury. Always guns in the bedroom: such was life in the black. Cutting cleanly through the discordant alarms, the first gunshot’s blasting ehco again made Wash freeze. The ricochet and subsequent shots had him diving to the catwalk, arms wrapped around his head. Not so heroic, to be sure, but seemed like the prudent course of action. Mouth agape, eyes wide, Wash raised his head up just enough to scan the situation. To his right he could make out shadowy figures hurling themselves through the cracks in the cargo bay door, and he could faintly hear them screaming. To his left he saw someone... Simon?! running across the hold, then directly beneath him. Wash followed the Doc’s splashy progress over to the door control panel, saw him crouch, take aim. More gunfire came from his left, but the pilot was momentarily too captivated by Simon Tam’s unlikely positioning in this affair to follow anything else. Wash grabbed a guardrail, willing himself to stand. The shots stopped coming from his left, allowing more intruders easy ingress through the gap in the door. With his bird’s eye view, Wash could see Simon stumble back, falling down as he lost his footing on the wet floor. Worse yet, one of the tian sa de mo was sprinting toward the Doc, bringing a rifle to bear. Time for thinkin’ was over. Wash took a strong grip on the top rail and braced one foot a couple of rungs below, acquiring leverage. He leapt. Truly flying now.