Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, etc. belong not to me, but to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and Fox, and no money is being made here. The story, however, is mine.

I was sitting in the dining room looking over the plan for our big heist. We would be coming up on the dark side of Osiris in mere minutes, and I wanted to make sure everything was in place ready to go. This was an important job, and we needed to make sure it was done right. One slip, and we wouldn’t get another shot to hit the Alliance this hard. Libby yelled to me from the cockpit. “Eddie! We got a problem!” I ran down the front hallway, and up the steps into the bridge. I immediately saw something I didn’t like. “Ta ma de jun dan! Is that the Dortmunder?” It was one of those bigass cruisers the Alliance had. And it was hailing us. “Yes, it’s early. What do you want me to do?” I was caught between a rock and a hard place at this point. The mission hadn’t even started yet, and it was in danger of being over. Stupid Alliance can’t even hold to their own schedules. After a few seconds of thinking, I had no ideas, and I’m pretty sure Libby was lost too. “Okay, wave Tobias. Tell him I need those access codes A-SAP, and that he needs to speed things up. My guess is some feng le Alliance commander wants to make a good impression on brass by stopping the first vessel that just happens to go anywhere near restricted orbit on a core planet. Oh, and open up an audio channel to the Dortmunder. We don’t want to look suspicious.” A voice came over the comm line. “Firefly class ship Liberty, be advised, you are entering a restricted orbit. You are ordered to halt immediately.” Of course, I wasn’t listening. I already knew what I was doing was perfectly legal. I pushed a button to talk back. “We are over point three-three declination off the restricted orbit. We’re only using it for a speed boost.” We waited for a few seconds to hear back. “Judging by your current path, you are en route to Persephone.” Another pause worth a few seconds. “Divert course. Two gunships will escort you to a dock. We will continue this discussion in a more official capacity.” Libby was equally as pissed as I was. “We can hard burn it, go back the way we came.” “No,” I responded. “We can’t scrap this mission. We’ll just have to alter it some.” “Eddie, nothing is worth rotting in an Alliance brig for life. We can take some other job. Make even more. Your pay for this job is quite low anyway and-” I cut Libby off. “Not everything is about money.” I went back on the comm. “Acknowledged. Cutting engine. You can pull us in.” About a minute later, I heard a large thud against the hull. The gunships had attached their grapplers and were taking us to a dock. “Libby, it’s best we tell Tobias what’s up sooner than later.” “Oh, yeah.” She pressed some buttons on the console. “In the meantime, I’ll go down and greet our guests.” They were already knocking on our door when I got down there. I pressed the button to open the airlock. Two armed guards and a lieutenant were on the other side. The lieutenant spoke first. “You operate this vessel alone?” “No,” I told him. “I have one other on the bridge. She’s making sure we’re locked down and ready to-” The lieutenant had already advanced to the PA and grabbed the microphone. “All personnel aboard report to the cargo bay.” He turned off the PA. “She?” “It’s not what you think.” And as I said that, Libby came down the stairs from the dining room. And you could tell the lieutenant was eyeing her. Not that I blame him. She is pretty cute. After I was able to come up with the miracle breakthrough programming to let a machine know what it likes a couple years ago, she soon decided she wanted a human body. She went through a database of peoples’ pictures, and decided on what she wanted to look like. She chose a petite female figure about 5½ feet tall (incidentally, my height), a light, peachish color for the skin, shoulder length brown hair, and red eyes. Yes, I said red eyes. Anyhow, I had parts ordered for the body, and I was able to put it and her already existing structure together in our spare time (and believe me, there’s a lot of it when you’re in transit between planets). She looks, feels, and even acts human (although we’re still working on the acting part). And she does dress normally. Well, most of the time. It took a lot of programming and assembling to get her this way, but it was worth it. Anyhow, the two guards immediately put their guns on us while the lieutenant spoke. “Let’s see here, you illegally have an Alliance stormtank in your cargo bay-” I cut him off there. Just a quick brief, a stormtank is a small, one-man treaded tank no bigger than my bedroom. The Alliance used them pretty effectively starting on Hera during the war. They are quick, and have a small cannon and machine gun on them. A stormtank could turn one man into a demolition team. Except mine didn’t have the armor top (which also holds the cannon), and the rear was open ended so I could fit cargo in. Now, it’s more like an armored pickup truck on treads than anything else. “Yeah, I got that in a junkyard on Ariel. It’s perfectly legal.” “And that machine gun. It’s illegal to transport arms over interplanetary borders.” I cut him off again. Yes, it still had its machine gun. “Not if they aren’t hull-piercing. There’s nothing of the sort in this ship.” Well, technically, that was true. All my hull-piercing guns were on the outside. And if you want to get really technical, my torpedoes aren’t hull piercing. They just blow up real pretty. Libby was next to speak up. “Are you gonna keep pointing out non-existent illegalities, or are you gonna let us on our way?” “Well,” the lieutenant started to say as the guards held their guns on Libby and me. Then he got something in through his earpiece. “I got word from the bridge. According to your flight plan on file, you are due to land on Persephone in 6 hours as a relief taxi for when we hit orbit.” That was news to me. The only way that could’ve been on file was if someone had set it for me ahead of schedule. And then a big, stocky man walked through the tunnel that connected Liberty to her dock. The face looked awfully familiar. “He’s with me.” The lieutenant spoke again. “Yes, that came through from the captain too, Mr…” The big man spoke up. “Sir Regal. Tobias Regal.” “I’m sorry, Sir. I didn’t know...” The lieutenant was now embarrassed as hell, as he called his two armed guards and left my boat. “Sir Regal?” Now even Libby was lost. “I have my contacts.” Tobias was now smiling. “Eddie, how are ya, lad?” “Been better. How was everything on Osiris?” I asked. He started telling us what happened as we made our way to the dining room. “Rushed, if I may say so. We were able to sneak your package onto one of the cargo shuttles. Unfortunately, with the Dortmunder being early, I had to stay aboard so we could hit it in time.” Libby was behind us. “Did you tag it for us?” “Couldn’t,” Tobias continued. “Not enough time. And I see you guys are going along for the ride. What were you thinking?” I told Tobias about our agenda. “We were supposed to hit Persephone at least a day before the Dortmunder got there. We take troops from ground to cruiser, take marked packages, deviate a little to take my package to the benefactor, get paid, deliver the rest of the goods, get a little money from the post, and we hit the border worlds.” Tobias stared at me blankly as we entered the dining room. “Why didn’t you run?” “They were in ahead of us. They would’ve caught us, sent me to a brig, and none of your influence could’ve gotten us out. And this mission is too important for us to hard-burn out.” Essentially that rock and hard place metaphor I used earlier. “Speaking of which: Sir Regal?” I had to question that. I knew he had connections with brass, but not that good. “When I heard we were rushed, I had to create files to help us on the cortex,” he said in his semi-deep voice. “I sure as hell hope this cargo is as important as you say it is. As of now, we’re looking at an almost impossible job.” I knew he was right. “Well, it looked easier on paper.”