A/N: I don't own 'em, just like to play.

What the hell is wrong with me? I can't stop! It's like a disease.

This one is all for you, Wash! Joss be damned, you're still the best pilot in the 'verse!

*******

Mal crept down the hall, not liking the level of gunfire he was hearing. Jayne and River were making a right good show of it, though. Mal did a quick count, and came up with fifteen Fed soldiers embroiled in a stand off with his mercenary and crazy girl. He raised his eyebrows in surprise. Not too shabby.

**

"Here they come, girl. Best hold up on them grenades!" Jayne caught a glimpse of Mal's EMT uniform and Simon's white doctor coat as he forced another Fed to duck. "No fair killin' our own."

"Right. The money's not good enough." She gave Jayne a sweet smile as he gave her a very dirty look. Unable to throw the grenades back now, River grabbed some type of tool from the desk she was hiding behind, and began deftly disarming them as they landed next to her.

Jayne's eyes about bugged out. "Don't know how you learned 'bout disarmin', but best hope they don't throw more'n one at a time." Jayne glanced out and took a shot at an exposed arm, getting a yelp of pain in return.

"They won't. The blast from two or more might kill me, and they won't do that." She cocked her head a bit. "Ooooh. Not yet, anyway." She giggled and raised her voice. "Hurry up, Simon! They're getting agitated!" She laughed some more as another grenade dropped into her lap.

**

"Guess your sis thinks we're movin' too slow, Doc. Zoe? Wanna start removin' obstacles?" Mal motioned for Zoe to cover the left while he went down the right. "Stay right behind me, Doc, an' keep Kaylee behind you. She can't defend herself."

Like shooting fish in a barrel, Mal and Zoe began methodically gunning down soldiers from behind as they moved forward. It took quite a while for the Feds to react, as they were not used to people dressed as medical personnel pulling guns on them, especially since Mal and Zoe were veterans of the nastiest ground war the Alliance had ever seen and weren't making themselves easy targets. They'd thinned the group down to six - five privates and a lieutenant - and were almost to the barricade when Simon felt a jerk on the wheelchair he was dragging behind him.

Some type of officer - after the past few days, Simon was really going to have to learn to read rank insignia - was attempting to unbuckle Kaylee out of the wheelchair, apparently assuming she was a hostage for this group of desperados. Simon knew he had to do something, but ultimately, he was a doctor, and couldn't quite bring himself to shoot a man who was trying to help an innocent. So instead of gunning him down, Simon reversed his weapon and smashed it into the man's face. He may not be a cold-blooded killer, but someone was trying to kidnap his girl, and that at least deserved a pistol whipping. The man went down without a word.

**

"It's about time!" Book grunted in triumph as the locking mechanism beeped at him and the door swung open. "You folks might want to be leaving now, eh?" Jayne and River turned around and blinked in the light a few times before diving out the door and running for shuttle two.

Book waited until they were safely aboard, then assumed a military bearing and strode into the doorway. "Hold your fire! What the hell do you people think you're doing?" The six remaining soldiers looked quite startled as Book - backlit by the light from the door - began demanding an accounting of why they were holding a firefight in a gorram hospital. Mal and Zoe crept up behind the soldiers, and seeing what was what, quickly stowed their weapons and began handing Kaylee over the barrier.

"Wait a minute, there! This facility is locked down!" A soldier moved to stop Mal. Zoe, giving Book a look loaded with meaning and getting a nod in return, ran past the group and into Wash's waiting shuttle, which immediately took off. A soldier moved to go after her, but was interrupted by more yelling.

"Kaylee?! Sweetie?" Inara rushed forward, suddenly the protective house mother coming to pick up her girl who was in for a routine procedure. "My God! What did you animals do to her? She was just in for a checkup and now she's...she's....unconscious! The Guild will be quite displeased!" Inara unleashed her full fury on the soldier attempting to stop Mal and Simon from getting Kaylee out the door. The soldier fell back a step and let them continue.

Simon took his cue, wanting out of there as fast as possible. "She'll be fine, Ms. Serra, but we must be on our way to prevent any more....mishaps. Her health is still quite fragile and all this excitement isn't helping." He gave the lieutenant a glare at the last, just like any other core doctor upset with things not going his way.

"Of course. My shuttle is just outside. Let's go." Inara turned and huffed out the door, with Mal carrying Kaylee and Simon running alongside and looking concerned.

"Now." Once they were all aboard, Book was back in command, apparently seething. "Why don't you go get me your commanding officer and we'll discuss your conduct?"

"Of course, but first I'm going to need to see your credentials, sir." The Lieutenant finally noticed that Book's "uniform" was a little sparse of insignia, and was starting to get suspicious.

Book grinned hugely. "Excellent, son! I'm glad to see you're remembering procedure. Finally." Book took one step back and slammed the door in the soldier's face. After removing the bobby pin from the lock, the door was once again sealed shut. Book turned and ran for Inara's shuttle, fairly diving inside and slamming the door shut. They lifted off right as the hospital door burst open and Alliance soldiers started spilling out, led by an officer holding his nose and yelling orders in a nasally voice while also screaming into a radio. They set up positions and began firing on the shuttle, but soon stopped as the whine of very powerful engines made it impossible to not look up.

**

Whoooo!" Wash whooped as he brought Serenity in to hover ten feet from the Alliance soldiers. He cackled maniacally as the the jetwash threw them around like leaves. "Eat my dust....err, wake. Whatever, just eat it!" He suddenly stopped yelling and look contemplative. "Lambey-toes? Can we get me a hat? I really feel I need a cowboy hat when riding to the rescue."

Zoe just smiled and shook her head. Despite the concentration required to hover something as large as Serenity ten feet from the deck, Wash still found time to banter. "We'll look into it, husband. For now, how about not crashin' the ship?"

"Well, if you insist." Wash flipped a few switches as the clunk of Inara's shuttle - with all aboard, he was informed - hitting the docking bay came through the hull. "Hang on, boys and girls, this is gonna be fun!" Wash nosed the ship nearly straight up and gunned the engine, pointing Serenity directly into the sun. "Harder to follow us if they can't see us so well.," he explained as he turned a dial to darken the front windows. "Although straight up tends to be hard on the engine. Of course, so is getting shot." He shrugged and opened the throttle a bit more, aiming for deep space.

"Where we headed, anyway?" Zoe turned her head from the wind screen. That sun was gorram bright. How did Wash stand it?

Wash pointed. "That way. I hear there's a lot of stars out there, and good places to hide with much fewer Feds looking to kill us." He glanced down at his instruments and frowned. "Engine's getting a bit hot. Kaylee's gonna be pissed."

"We'll just forget to tell Kaylee about it, Wash." Mal worked his way onto the bridge from the shuttle, grabbing for handholds untl the grav drive kicked in and made it easier to walk.

"She's OK then, sir?"

"Yep. She ain't awake yet - girl's gonna need herself a stronger constitution one of these days - but Doc swears now she's just asleep, no coma. Checked her over with one of those electro gizmos he was goin' on about. Anyway, Wash, let's make course for - whoa!" Mal was cut off as the proximity alarm sounded, prompting Wash to throw the ship violently to the right as a magnetic grapple sailed past the nose on the left. Zoe caught herself on the co-pilot's chair, but Mal was bounced against the wall. "Ow! What the hell!"

"Well. It appears the Alliance didn't like the whole breaking and entering thing." Wash had gone very calm, as he usually did when concentrating very hard on not getting the ship blown up. So long as he didn't start up with those silly metaphors, Wash could do whatever he wanted to keep the ship in the air. "Here, Lucy, hold this." Wash stripped off his wristwatch and tossed it over the neck of his brontosaurus. With his hands free, Wash was ready to roll. "Can someone please get me a rear visual and perhaps convince Kaylee to wake up and get to the engine room?"

Mal ran for the comm as Zoe started fiddling with the controls for the vid screen. "Doc, I hate to interrupt your smoochin' on my mechanic, but maybe you can get her over to the engine so we don't explode?"

Simon's voice came back from the infirmary, sounding - as was usual for Simon in Doctor Mode - a bit irritated. "I'll just ignore the implication that I'd take advantage of her right now, Captain, but the fact that she's still asleep poses a problem. I don't really want to wake her unless - " Simon was interrupted by the sound of an open-hand slap, followed by Kaylee's voice cursing at River in Chinese. "Never mind. It appears she's awake now. We'll get right on it." Simon commed off.

"Damn crazy girl makes a better doc than the Doc.", Mal muttered, then turned back to the vid screen. "What we got, Zoe?"

"Fed cruiser. Seems gettin' a bead on River an' Simon has them a mite motivated." Zoe flipped through the tactical displays. Wash cursed as another Alliance ship joined the chase, forcing him to redline Serenity's engine. Not good. He could hear the pop of the circuit breakers from here.

Mal cursed as well - it seemed the thing to do lately - and went back to the comm. "Jayne? Set up for a boarding party if this goes bad. Kaylee? You back in that engine room yet?" He waited a few minutes as Wash kept dodging Fed grapples. This was getting ugly.

Kaylee finally answered, sounding tired. "I'm here, Cap'n. What'ya need?"

"You ain't gonna drop on me, are ya? Promise if we get outta this, you can drag Simon around for a good long nap, darlin'."

As Mal expected, that seemed to perk Kaylee right up. "Oh! I'm shiny. I got Book here to help me out."

"I hate to bust in on your moment, Mal, but I could sure use some more juice." Despite being very glad to hear Kaylee talking again, Wash had two other very angry ships on his mind. "Kaylee? Can we do a full burn?"

"Yeah, but you better get us out of atmo with it, 'cause we're gonna have to coast a while after. It's all manner of burnt up in here." Wash could hear a fire extinguisher in the background as Book took care of something that was still flaming.

"Huh. OK, save that. Could we handle a bit more agility, then? I have a different idea." Wash smiled and began resetting his controls for a new flight profile.

"We can do that. Book?" Kaylee's voice faded a bit as she turned to address her help. "Can you open the press regulator a touch more? Gonna have some extra plasma to bleed off here." Her voice came back full, along with the sounds of buttons being pressed as fast as possible. "OK, Wash. You got it, but try not to hurt my baby."

"Not to worry, youngin', she's like putty in my hands." Wash grinned rakishly. "Just don't let her blow up quite yet. Everyone else hold on to something."

The crew braced themselves as Wash nosed his boat back down to the planet, aiming directly at the second Fed ship. The Alliance ship turned to face Serenity, and now they were engaged in a high-speed game of chicken six miles above the surface. "Uh, Wash?" Mal looked nervous. "I don't recall tellin' you rammin' things to be acceptable use of my boat. In fact, now that we mention it, I specifically frown on such behavior."

Wash's eyes were glued to rear vid, where the first ship was still chasing them, not seeming to notice the large cruiser directly in front of them. "C'mon, you beauty. You know my big, yellow ass is just too juicy to ignore. Come and get me!" Wash used his newly added maneuverability and wiggled the flight yoke, lewdly shaking the ship's rear at the Feds. "Oh, yeah! You like that, don't you? Want a piece?"

Zoe was all manner of amused at her husband, clearly trusting him to pull another rabbit from his hat. "We need to leave you alone with the ship, Wash?"

"Oh, don't worry. It's not as juicy as yours, sweetie." Wash opened his comm. "Kaylee? We need full burn when I say, no questions asked."

"'K, Wash. Ready."

Wash grinned. This was going to be great. On his screen, the rear ship dropped another grapple into firing position and charged it up. "OK, OK, here it comes, not yet, not yet....now, Kaylee!" Right as the pursuing ship fired, Wash again pulled the nose straight up, this time with all the power Serenity could muster behind him. The grapple missed the rear extender by inches, and instead latched onto the nose of the second ship Serenity had been racing towards. Wash whooped some more as two very large and heavy Alliance cruisers suddenly found themselves stuck together and closing distance rapidly, unable to follow the Firefly. As Serenity shot out of the atmosphere, Wash used the engines to ignite their plasma trail, partially to confuse any Fed sensors, but mainly just because it was pretty.

"And that, ladies, gents, and dinosaurs, is how it's done! Nice work back there, guys." Wash tapped the autopilot and shut down the engines so Kaylee could get to work on them. "We'll just coast a bit. We're heading roughly towards Beumonde, but the engine should be back up before we need to correct." He gave Zoe a leer. "Well? Did I earn my hat yet?"

"And more." She turned to Mal. "Best take over, sir. Gotta check my husband for injury." Zoe grabbed Wash by the shirt and hauled him from his chair. Wash just grinned at his good fortune.

Mal gave Wash a wry look. He wasn't letting them off that easy, not after playing chicken with his ship. "Doc might be able to help out with that, Zoe."

Wash's face fell. "Oh God! Now I'll just be thinking of Simon the whole time!"