SCAR PETALS

CHAPTER ONE

Haven? No safe haven this. Blood, and smoke, and screaming. He will always remember the screaming. Things seem darker than before. The little dinosaurs are blackened by the smoke, their cute noses choked up with soot; they are knee deep in broken glass. So is he. Something felled the palm trees. Their lush green leaves are scattered over the pilot’s desk like splintered emeralds. He tries to reach for them, but he can’t move. His legs won’t move, and it’s like there’s a band of iron round him, round his chest, pinning his arms to his sides, pressing him back into his chair.

He can hear her screaming. Zoe, Zoe. And Mal, shouting. Don’t yell at her. Don’t YELL at her. He can’t open his eyes. There’s weights tied to his eyelashes, holding his lids down. Zoe. He has to get to her. Has to. Is she OK? Is she hurt? Why can’t he see, gorram it? All he can see is black, but inside his head, it’s red, bright scarlet, as if Mal’s reaver-paint job disguise has splashed into his skull and filled it up… Zoe…

Blinding blue-white pain sears itself into every cell, and there is only the bliss of sinking into sleep before he nosedives into oblivion.

“Reavers, Cap, fall back!” Captain Malory doesn’t listen. She’s never obeyed orders, certainly not from her crew. It’s one of the things they like best about her. She cocks her gun, smells the cordite on the air. Not just cordite, neither. Blood. Red like rose petals in wine, catching in her mouth, shivering along her tongue. Red like her hair, blazing in the sun, a plait of flame bound with black cord and tamed at the base of her neck. The smell of blood hits the back of her throat as she breathes; strong, metallic, like copper. Like licking a penny. But the coin-taste sticks in her throat, and she coughs against the burning red scent, bringing her sleeve up to her cracked lips as if it will protect her. It won’t. There’s just her and her crew… And - Them.

The Reavers pour across her vision, fluid, shimmering, a symphony of pain blistering itself on her brain. They have to die. All of them. She refuses to allow any more of her crew to be taken. She’s already lost two. Will’s sister, little Kerry, got carried off screaming before anyone could see sense to shoot her. Stuart, though… Stuart went down fighting, took out two of the bastards before he was buried under their flailing limbs, their axes and knives. He’d surfaced howling like a demon, doused in blood, his sloe-black eyes glittering like chips of jet. She’d met those eyes, those dark devil eyes, and she’d put a bullet between them. She hadn’t had time to cry.

“Cap!”

Lucy shrieking to her from the top of the damaged ship, all painted up, covered in bodies. Reaver ship, by the looks of it.

“They got someone in there!”

Will, Tom and Sallie are holding off the Reavers. For a medic, Sallie's one crazy fighter, and Tom's just a dirty fighter. Will... well, Will's got Kerry's death driving him on. Too many gunshots dance in her head as she turns to Lucy.

“Ruttin’ shoot him, then!” she screams, her voice harsh and strained. “Don’t give 'em any more satisfaction – uh..”

She screams, half fear, half fury. There’s a Reaver right in her face, snarling, growling, laughing even, stinking to high hell with the blood of her crew, and she doesn’t even think to go for her gun. It’s the blade this time that she snatches up from her belt, the bright, silvery sparkle near-blinding both her and the Reaver as it catches the sun. Wickedly curved, cruelly sharp, it slices into the Reaver’s neck as she puts all her weight behind the blow. She pulls her arm back, fiercely; no way is this creature taking her knife with it when it falls. The blood sprays out in an arc, blackish-red, vile-smelling, just plain wrong. Not even stopping to check the thing is dead, she wipes her face with her gore-soaked sleeve and heads for Lucy.

Gorram, the girl’s halfway through the window, she thinks, and begins to climb. It’s hard to get purchase with her boots on the warm metal body of the ship, but she’s going in the same way Lucy did, and there’s no telling what’s happening inside. Atop the craft, her boot slips, and she crashes in through the window, pulling Lucy down with her.

“Ai ya!” she swears, struggling awkwardly to her knees, feeling the broken glass on the floor crunch under her weight, trying to dig its needle-sharp edges into her skin. “What the… wode tian,” she breathes.

It ain’t often Lucy Davis sees Captain Malory lost for words. It ain’t often the Cap stands still in a dangerous situation, neither. Lucy stretches out a timorous hand, and touches her arm.

He’s sitting so still in the chair, speared through the chest by an evil-looking thing, some kind of harpoon, wooden, huge, seemingly immovable. His head hangs to one side, his skin bluish-white beneath constellations of freckles, his eyes closed. Ignoring Lucy, she creeps forward, as if the slightest movement may wake him. Holy Mother, it isn’t fair. Another one lost to those yaoguai Reavers. His eyelashes brush his skin like copper fans.

“Suanle,” the Captain says. “Suanle.” She pushes her blood-soaked hair back from her face.

And then she freezes, not daring to believe what she is seeing.

Like a wave rippling along white sands, like the rise and fall of a cat’s fur as it sleeps, like a leaf on the rhythm of the slightest summer wind…

The wooden harpoon quivers.

He’s breathing.

She whips round to Lucy, her neck snapping around like a spitting cobra, and flings the girl her larger gun. “Go. Get Sallie. Make sure they’re all right. Send Will up to me as soon as you can. We got a live one here.”

Lucy’s eyes widen and she nods, amazed, scrambling for the window already as if she’d expected something like this. She pauses and looks back to see the Captain kneel down beside the young man, gun cocked to fire in case of another attack, but there’s a strange look on her face. One that Lucy Davis never thought to see on Captain Malory in a battle. She isn’t even sure what it is. It’s just – odd. Like the picture she saw in her church back home. Like the Holy Mother looking down on the Child.

“Jie jie?” she says. “Kate?”

Captain Malory doesn’t even look round. “Go, I said!”

Lucy slides out of sight.

Something glints around his neck, and Captain Malory leans closer curiously. He smells of juniper, of sandalwood and amber. The scent soothes away the smoke in her lungs. She takes a deep breath, one hand still poised to shoot whatever might come through the doors, and scans the room. Glass everywhere. Blood and soot, twisted metal and one hell of a lot of damage. And – she frowns. Children’s toys scattered over the pilot desk. Five little plastic dinosaurs. Ah, hell. She has no idea what they mean, what they are, but she doesn’t want them to get smashed up any more. Besides, they’re kinda cute. It seems mean to leave them to die. Even though they’re not really alive.

Gorram it, stop thinking like a moonbrain. She scoops the little dinos up with her free hand, stuffing them into her flight suit. They nestle against her chest, their horns and tails and feet caught in the weave of her shirt. They’re comfortable there. Safe.

Slowly, the sheer brutal noise outside starts to fade, the comforting roaring voice of their own ship starts singing its song, and Kate Malory lays her hand against the wounded man’s cheek, painting him with Reaver blood, with her crew’s blood, with her blood.

“We got you, nianqing de,” she says, and carefully lifts his silver dogtag out from beneath his bloodstained shirt. “We got you... Hoban.”

Translations:

Ai ya – damn Wode tian – oh, sky Yaoguai – monster Suanle – forget it Jie jie – big sister Nianqing de – young one, little one

I hope you all enjoyed my first fanfic. It will go on from here, I promise. I'm grateful for any feedback, even if you hate it. I've only been watching FF for two weeks, and seen Serenity once. Hopefully my work will improve as I see our BDH's more! - Our Mrs W