Disclaimer: anything recognizable is property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, etc. The story is mine though. I had to take a couple creative liberties, but only on things never explained in the series. I also used my own translator for the Manderin, so it may not be perfect (although either way, it is comical).

“According to the schematics Bill pulled up, the lift should be at the end of this hallway.” I had just turned a corner with Tobias right behind me. Knowing that there had to be guards there, I pulled two pistols out of my belt and let them take the lead. Go figure, I was right. Standing in front of our intended ride were three guards. I let my Peacemakers do the talking to the two on the left, while Tobias made a perfect shot to the one on the right. We got into the lift and rode it up. “I’m surprised no one knows we’re here yet.” We got off two levels above where we started. Two guards were on the outside of the lift. Both Tobias and I clubbed them with our guns. Another turned the corner a few feet away. Tobias took this one out with a nice shot to the chest. We kept going straight. We were right outside the room we were hoping Serra was in when the alarms blared. “Well lad, looks like the stealth portion of this mission is over.” Tobias went into the closed doorway for cover. But no one was coming after us leaving me baffled as to why this was so easy. I stared at the lock for the door. A few seconds later, it clicked, and the door opened. One problem: everybody who was supposed to come after us en route according to our plans was waiting for us on the other side of the door. A squadron of twelve Federal Security officers came into view, half of them with sonic rifles, half with government-issue semi-automatic rifles. The ones with the sonic rifles fired en masse. I had enough time to back up to the other side of the doorway with Tobias. The other six started firing. As we were behind cover, we weren’t hit. I pulled out two fresh Peacemakers. Peering around the corner, I noticed where the squad had taken cover. Tobias was firing back, but didn’t have any luck. So, I put my back to the wall, reached out with both arms to give my guns line of sight, pulled both triggers six times… I walked out into the room and counted twelve bodies. Tobias was stunned again. He followed me into the room staring at the body count. “Hong dong yi shi di ren wu… Glad I’m on your side.” He looked around the room. “Ooh, salvage!” He took off the largest of the dead Feds’s uniform and tossed his Winchesters on it. He then proceeded to grab every weapon the dead troops had plus some grenades, and tossed those in the pile. After grabbing two of the semi-automatics for his own use, Tobias tied up the uniform making an impromptu sack. Meanwhile, I went to the far side of the room where another door was. Opening it, I saw a slender Asian woman, short hair, mid-thirties, hands cuffed into a metal chair, and a gag in her mouth to prevent her from talking. “Doctor Ng, I presume.” I removed the gag. “Very funny, Eddie. Now, could you get these things off of me?” I looked at the cuffs. Still having a Peacemaker in my hand, I fired at both of the locks blowing them off. Serra got up immediately and walked out the door into the larger room with Tobias. Not saying a word, she grabbed one of Tobias’s semi-automatics right off his back. I followed her out. “Serra, this is Tobias. Tobias, Serra. Now can we please get out of here?!?” Tobias was more concerned with Serra having one of his guns. “Lass, do you know how to use that being a scientist and all?” With the alarms still blaring, another guard rushed in to the room behind Tobias. Serra, already at stance with the rifle, fired a shot that whizzed just above Tobias’s shoulder and into the guard behind him. Still moving slightly on the ground, I put one more bullet through his brain. “Relax Tobias. I taught her how to shoot.” “He’s a very good teacher.” She turned to me. “So, how’s Libby?” “A bit on the gu-zhuang side today, but other than that, she’s herself.” I walked out the door into the hallway. Serra followed. “I’m afraid to ask.” Tobias had turned in the opposite direction and shot another guard coming in behind us. “People, I’d suggest we move. Fast.” Not even listening to him, we all ran toward the lift we came up on. That’s when we found out that power had been cut. “Huai le. The Feds must have access to central maintenance.” Serra started running in another direction. “Follow me.” We followed her to another hallway. We saw an open door at the end and a flight of stairs. Unfortunately for us, Feds were coming up the stairs en masse. So we dropped everything except our guns and shot whatever we had in that direction. As soon as a Fed rushed up the stairs, we gunned them down, all without cover. The melee lasted about a minute. When the Feds stopped coming, we ran down two levels of stairs. We must’ve seen fifty bodies between the top and bottom, it was so flooded with dead Feds. Upon exit of the stairwell, we ran down the hallway to central maintenance where my shuttle was parked. Serra was right. The Feds had gained access to it. But all was taken care of as more Feds were cut down by G-Gun fire. How they managed to cut power to the lifts is something I still haven’t figured out, but it was all a moot point right now. Within moments, we were all nice and safe on board my shuttle. Bill was the first to speak. “Doctor Ng, I presume.” She just stared him down. It worked just fine with her being at least six feet tall, and him being, well, scrawny. “Just get us out of here.” She ended her staring at Bill. “Nice crew you got. How in the lan-shai de di yu did you end up with these two?” I could tell she didn’t like them too much. Or at least she thought they were idiots. Serra Ng is one of those people who won’t hate you, but will call you an idiot a million times to your face. “Tobias… well, he’s an idiot. But he used his connections to help us free another from the Blue Hands. Plus he makes a great point man. And Bill’s cool. He’s a smart mechanic. He was on his way to a cushy job on Persephone when he got tangled with us. He even made our engines point-five percent more efficient in the process.” “Oh Eddie, what are you doing to my ship?” Bill abruptly turned around. “Her ship?” I butted in. “Long story. Get us out of here!” “I can’t. A short-range shuttle can’t fly indoors like this.” Bill kept pressing buttons. I took a grenade from Tobias’s loot bag. “Then we’ll just go out the way we came in.” All in a quick series of events, I threw the grenade at the pumps right when more Feds came in. The door to the shuttle immediately closed with me inside it. The pumps blew and water came out of it. Tobias had the G-Gun and was attacking anyone who came into central maintenance. Then he ran out of bullets. But all the bulkheads were still open. Any Feds that decided to take advantage of our ammo shortage were soon hit with a tidal wave coming into the room. The Feds flew everywhere, some barraging our hull, others flying up against the walls and ceiling. A minute later, the whole room was flooded. Finally, there was an eddy which forced the shuttle out the way we came in. I sat down in the pilot’s seat. There were plenty of floating bodies en route to the auxiliary maintenance room we came in. At this point, we couldn’t tell who was a Fed and who was a scientist. But we made it out of the facility unscathed. It was when we were out of the facility that the problems started up again. “Lady, gentlemen, we are officially out of gas.” That wasn’t our only problem. A small blackish-greenish ship with forward-facing stabilizers on the port and starboard was pulling up to the station. It was a Blue Hand ship. And they had spotted us. Serra was the first to speak up. “Well, we could toss the big guy out.” “Not even funny, Serra. Any other ideas?” I stopped. “On second thought...” I keyed something into my computer, then went back to the G-Gun controls. I twisted one of the handles, revealing another button. I held the button down while aiming at the Blue Hand ship. And waited… and waited… and waited… now the enemy was almost on us. Something opened up on the bottom which looked like a grappler. They had us… But out of nowhere, a torpedo stormed through the water and into the Blue Hand’s ship – right where my laser had painted. Libby was able to send in a torpedo from Liberty. We heard the explosion as the water rushing into what used to be air pulled us in. The large air bubble released was enough to push us slowly toward the surface of the ocean. About a minute later, we were able to see the light filtering in from above. There was a storm above us, but the sun was still rather low on the horizon, making it a sunny day. On a world like Ariel, it rains a lot, so this was a common weather occurrence. “Oh great, lightening.” That was one true problem I had. I am a walking lightening rod after all. Another problem: there were a lot of dead bodies above us. That was attracting a lot of ships. It’s not like the bodies were easy to miss. It was chaos when we reached the surface. Some of the armed Fed ships were firing at civilian ships just passing by. Some civilian ships had people hanging out an open door shooting back and lobbing grenades into the fray. All in a thunderstorm. Even waterboats had pulled in. Some were gathering bodies, some had Feds entering the fray. And all in the middle of it was this small, standard short-range shuttle which was out of gas. The waves were bashing against us, but at least we were floating. Which was more than I can say about a Fed waterboat which we just witnessed sink due to a grenade landing in it. Bill was working the computer in the back. “I’ve sent our coordinates back to Liberty. But I don’t know if she’s getting it.” Nobody in the fray noticed a Firefly approaching from the rear of the Feds. A Fed ship had just unloaded its missiles into three civilian ships prettymuch destroying them. Liberty had enough time to deploy all bazookas lining the ship and fire one well aimed shot from each of them at the missile boat. Liberty then splashed down into the water. She pulled under us, her starboard wing directly below us. Liberty rose enough to grab us in the shuttle dock, then fired her engines. We rose with Liberty, out to the black.