Apocalyptothon Fic--part 1
Title: Landmarks in Space
Author: 2ndary_author
Recipient: Jain
Fandom: Firefly/Serenity
Rating: R
Spoilers (if applicable): takes place after BDM, so contains spoilers for Serenity and all episodes
Warnings (if applicable): lawlessness, violence, etc.
A/N: I didn’t manage to work in all of the facets of your request, alas: it just got too long so the OCs fell by the wayside. Summary is from the movie, epigraph is from the Gnostic Gospels of Thomas.
Summary: "Half of history is hiding the truth"
Have you discovered the beginning, that you can ask about the end?
When the Alliance falls, it falls hard. Bullies usually do, so Mal can’t say as he’s overly surprised. The speed of it, though-now that’s a mite unexpected. Two things in particular he hadn’t seen coming, and one was how quickly it would topple: the monolith he had fought through four bitter, bloodstained years of war is swept away in a little over two weeks. Between the time they leave Mr. Universe’s satellite and the time they limp into drydock, there are no fewer than three coups and countercoups led by various government or military factions. By the time they have Serenity patched up enough to fly, there are reports of bread riots and sectarian violence in the streets of the Core planets. Alliance control is breaking down, warlords sweeping in behind: man abhors a power vacuum.
The reports on the cortex are spotty and contradictory, mostly ‘cause the Central Information Ministry is no longer broadcasting regularly, but also because Serenity’s media cortex has always been a mite finicky. Only Wash could get it to work right for centralized channels, and Mal can’t bring himself to fiddle with it now Wash is gone. It’s foolhearted and sentimental, he knows, but…well, it’s his gorram ship. ‘Sides, all the news they’re missing is bad news, and they’ve had enough of that lately.
***
The crew only talks about the fall of the Alliance once, really, for all it’s on their minds. The night they limp into Eavesdown with the quickly patched repairs just barely holding, Mal sends Jayne out for food and he comes back with rice and fish wrapped in old newsprint.
Simon immediately smoothes out the stained paper and starts to read. Kaylee puts down her tea and looks over his shoulder.
“Funny thing, all that big-and-powerful bein’ gone so sudden,” Jayne remarks with his mouth full. He’s left greasy fingerprints all over a picture captioned MOB TORCHES CAP. CITY COUNCIL HALL.
Simon shrugs, “It seems things weren’t as unified as they appeared from the outside.”
The article is little more than a compilation of other news clips, but it becomes evident that over the years, the Core Council had filled its mid-level positions with the disgruntled and disenfranchised. Just goes to show the value of keeping your friends close and putting your enemies out the airlock, since several of these disgruntled bureaucrats had been lying in wait, biding their time until something came along to destabilize the council. That something had been a report about a distant planet named Miranda, where the Alliance had made a terrible mistake. The exact source of what the press was calling the Miranda Memo was still unknown-it had been broadcast from some sort of multi-band signal satellite-but maintaining public support outside while fighting numerous internecine enemies from the inside had proven too much for the Alliance.
(Serenity’s unintentional role is the second unexpected thing about the end of the worlds. Mal wonders if this means he wins the war.)
Jayne squints at the picture. “Like a gorram mountain, the Allliance was. All big and…mountain-ish.”
“It did seem like a fairly permanent arrangement,” Inara concedes.
“Like a tornado,” Kaylee suggests, “Like those wind storms we had back home, just comin’ along, sucking things up, putting ‘em down wherever it pleased.”
Simon nods, “Like some kind of vast, intricate machine.”
“Like a cup!”
Mal waits a moment to see if River’s comment will make more sense given time. Nope. “How’s that, little one?”
River looks at him like they have never met. “Where’s Zoe?” she asks.
“River, the captain asked you a question,” Simon interjects. He glances over the top of his paper and might have pursued it, except that Zoe enters right then.
Jayne, who’s been odd around Zoe since Wash died, jumps up to give her a seat (Mal has wondered, in passing, if the mercenary hit his head on something during all that ruckus on Mr. Universe’s satellite). Like most of Jayne’s courtesies, it doesn’t quite work: he jostles the table, knocking over a bowl of rice and Kaylee’s teacup. The cup-one of a decorative set given to Inara by an admirer-shatters in a spray of tea. They never really get the stain out of the tablecloth and the whole crew is left picking up random glass slivers for days. Between the cursing and the mopping, Mal never does get an answer to his question.
***
The business of Persephone has always been business, especially at the Docks. The Alliance has fallen, but commerce rolls on as it always has…only more so, now that there are no courts to set the prices, no Alliance soldiers to enforce them, no lawmasters to investigate fraud. Anything can be had for a price, and all the prices are negotiated by force; even Badger, who has always been a small fish in a big, filthy pond, travels with a gang of bodyguards now to protect him from roving mobs of looters.
To top it all off, the air control tower has been shut down (one of the local captains of industry is holding it hostage, basically, until the trading citizens pay a king’s ransom). There are still smugglers willing to dock blind, but local goods have become even more dear. There’s a thriving black market. Mal fears that he’ll wake up some day to find Serenity’s titanium plates have been liberated by one side or the other. It's getting harder and harder to have no side at all.
Three days after they land, he’s on the way back to Serenity after a failing to acquire supplies when a kid darts out of the shadows on the edge of a marketplace and tugs on his sleeve. Mal nearly jumps out his skin.
The raggedy boy dances back a few steps, “C’mon,” he wheedles.
“What?!” Mal squints; he’s positive that he’s never seen this child in his life.
“I said, c’mon. I have something to show you.”
“Nothin’ I want to see,” Mal says, and keeps on walking.
“How do you know if you ain’t seen it yet?”
Mal turns, walking backwards but looking at the kid, who is maybe all of thirteen years old. He slows to a stop. “All right, then, what is it?”
The boy ducks into an alley, around a corner. Mal hesitates: it’s dangerous to walk through the marketplace, but the back streets are downright deadly. Still, goods are scarce enough that he won’t turn anything down out of hand. He follows the boy down the alley and under the tarp of a small lean-to, where a little girl is drawing on a grimy tablet in the corner. They look alike, boy and girl, the same wide-spaced dark eyes: brother and sister, maybe, cousins.
“She’s little but she’s strong,” the boy is saying. “She can cook, sew a little. And she’s smart…she can learn anything you want her to.”
“Well, good for her,” Mal replies, puzzled ,“but you said you had something to-”
“Anything,” the boy says again, insistently. “Anything you want her to. But we won’t take nothing but coin for her. My ma said not to come back with none of that Alliance script. It ain’t worth nothing now.”
Mal looks at the girl; she is ten, twelve at the outside.
He puts Serenity in the air as soon as he reaches the berth: air control or no, he won’t stay on Persephone a moment longer. He didn’t fight a war to stay land-locked.
***
Even before the Alliance collapsed, the Operative had left them precious few places to find refuge-if your quarry goes to ground, leave no ground to go to-so Triumph is the best of bad choices. Mal picks it mostly because it’s not far from Persephone, so they can save on fuel, and the locals are kindly disposed to them since they chased off those brigands. (He briefly considers Whitefall, since Patience will run that world just the same as she always has, Alliance or no, but he’s now dealt with Patience twice and she’s tried to shoot him-both times! Can’t say as he favors those odds overmuch.) Besides, when he thinks back on it, that harvest festival on Triumph was the last time they were all together and well (well, before than yun bun du Saffron…Yolanda…whatever). The thought has a sort of magic in the memory.
[Part 2]
Author: 2ndary_author
Recipient: Jain
Fandom: Firefly/Serenity
Rating: R
Spoilers (if applicable): takes place after BDM, so contains spoilers for Serenity and all episodes
Warnings (if applicable): lawlessness, violence, etc.
A/N: I didn’t manage to work in all of the facets of your request, alas: it just got too long so the OCs fell by the wayside. Summary is from the movie, epigraph is from the Gnostic Gospels of Thomas.
Summary: "Half of history is hiding the truth"
Have you discovered the beginning, that you can ask about the end?
When the Alliance falls, it falls hard. Bullies usually do, so Mal can’t say as he’s overly surprised. The speed of it, though-now that’s a mite unexpected. Two things in particular he hadn’t seen coming, and one was how quickly it would topple: the monolith he had fought through four bitter, bloodstained years of war is swept away in a little over two weeks. Between the time they leave Mr. Universe’s satellite and the time they limp into drydock, there are no fewer than three coups and countercoups led by various government or military factions. By the time they have Serenity patched up enough to fly, there are reports of bread riots and sectarian violence in the streets of the Core planets. Alliance control is breaking down, warlords sweeping in behind: man abhors a power vacuum.
The reports on the cortex are spotty and contradictory, mostly ‘cause the Central Information Ministry is no longer broadcasting regularly, but also because Serenity’s media cortex has always been a mite finicky. Only Wash could get it to work right for centralized channels, and Mal can’t bring himself to fiddle with it now Wash is gone. It’s foolhearted and sentimental, he knows, but…well, it’s his gorram ship. ‘Sides, all the news they’re missing is bad news, and they’ve had enough of that lately.
***
The crew only talks about the fall of the Alliance once, really, for all it’s on their minds. The night they limp into Eavesdown with the quickly patched repairs just barely holding, Mal sends Jayne out for food and he comes back with rice and fish wrapped in old newsprint.
Simon immediately smoothes out the stained paper and starts to read. Kaylee puts down her tea and looks over his shoulder.
“Funny thing, all that big-and-powerful bein’ gone so sudden,” Jayne remarks with his mouth full. He’s left greasy fingerprints all over a picture captioned MOB TORCHES CAP. CITY COUNCIL HALL.
Simon shrugs, “It seems things weren’t as unified as they appeared from the outside.”
The article is little more than a compilation of other news clips, but it becomes evident that over the years, the Core Council had filled its mid-level positions with the disgruntled and disenfranchised. Just goes to show the value of keeping your friends close and putting your enemies out the airlock, since several of these disgruntled bureaucrats had been lying in wait, biding their time until something came along to destabilize the council. That something had been a report about a distant planet named Miranda, where the Alliance had made a terrible mistake. The exact source of what the press was calling the Miranda Memo was still unknown-it had been broadcast from some sort of multi-band signal satellite-but maintaining public support outside while fighting numerous internecine enemies from the inside had proven too much for the Alliance.
(Serenity’s unintentional role is the second unexpected thing about the end of the worlds. Mal wonders if this means he wins the war.)
Jayne squints at the picture. “Like a gorram mountain, the Allliance was. All big and…mountain-ish.”
“It did seem like a fairly permanent arrangement,” Inara concedes.
“Like a tornado,” Kaylee suggests, “Like those wind storms we had back home, just comin’ along, sucking things up, putting ‘em down wherever it pleased.”
Simon nods, “Like some kind of vast, intricate machine.”
“Like a cup!”
Mal waits a moment to see if River’s comment will make more sense given time. Nope. “How’s that, little one?”
River looks at him like they have never met. “Where’s Zoe?” she asks.
“River, the captain asked you a question,” Simon interjects. He glances over the top of his paper and might have pursued it, except that Zoe enters right then.
Jayne, who’s been odd around Zoe since Wash died, jumps up to give her a seat (Mal has wondered, in passing, if the mercenary hit his head on something during all that ruckus on Mr. Universe’s satellite). Like most of Jayne’s courtesies, it doesn’t quite work: he jostles the table, knocking over a bowl of rice and Kaylee’s teacup. The cup-one of a decorative set given to Inara by an admirer-shatters in a spray of tea. They never really get the stain out of the tablecloth and the whole crew is left picking up random glass slivers for days. Between the cursing and the mopping, Mal never does get an answer to his question.
***
The business of Persephone has always been business, especially at the Docks. The Alliance has fallen, but commerce rolls on as it always has…only more so, now that there are no courts to set the prices, no Alliance soldiers to enforce them, no lawmasters to investigate fraud. Anything can be had for a price, and all the prices are negotiated by force; even Badger, who has always been a small fish in a big, filthy pond, travels with a gang of bodyguards now to protect him from roving mobs of looters.
To top it all off, the air control tower has been shut down (one of the local captains of industry is holding it hostage, basically, until the trading citizens pay a king’s ransom). There are still smugglers willing to dock blind, but local goods have become even more dear. There’s a thriving black market. Mal fears that he’ll wake up some day to find Serenity’s titanium plates have been liberated by one side or the other. It's getting harder and harder to have no side at all.
Three days after they land, he’s on the way back to Serenity after a failing to acquire supplies when a kid darts out of the shadows on the edge of a marketplace and tugs on his sleeve. Mal nearly jumps out his skin.
The raggedy boy dances back a few steps, “C’mon,” he wheedles.
“What?!” Mal squints; he’s positive that he’s never seen this child in his life.
“I said, c’mon. I have something to show you.”
“Nothin’ I want to see,” Mal says, and keeps on walking.
“How do you know if you ain’t seen it yet?”
Mal turns, walking backwards but looking at the kid, who is maybe all of thirteen years old. He slows to a stop. “All right, then, what is it?”
The boy ducks into an alley, around a corner. Mal hesitates: it’s dangerous to walk through the marketplace, but the back streets are downright deadly. Still, goods are scarce enough that he won’t turn anything down out of hand. He follows the boy down the alley and under the tarp of a small lean-to, where a little girl is drawing on a grimy tablet in the corner. They look alike, boy and girl, the same wide-spaced dark eyes: brother and sister, maybe, cousins.
“She’s little but she’s strong,” the boy is saying. “She can cook, sew a little. And she’s smart…she can learn anything you want her to.”
“Well, good for her,” Mal replies, puzzled ,“but you said you had something to-”
“Anything,” the boy says again, insistently. “Anything you want her to. But we won’t take nothing but coin for her. My ma said not to come back with none of that Alliance script. It ain’t worth nothing now.”
Mal looks at the girl; she is ten, twelve at the outside.
He puts Serenity in the air as soon as he reaches the berth: air control or no, he won’t stay on Persephone a moment longer. He didn’t fight a war to stay land-locked.
***
Even before the Alliance collapsed, the Operative had left them precious few places to find refuge-if your quarry goes to ground, leave no ground to go to-so Triumph is the best of bad choices. Mal picks it mostly because it’s not far from Persephone, so they can save on fuel, and the locals are kindly disposed to them since they chased off those brigands. (He briefly considers Whitefall, since Patience will run that world just the same as she always has, Alliance or no, but he’s now dealt with Patience twice and she’s tried to shoot him-both times! Can’t say as he favors those odds overmuch.) Besides, when he thinks back on it, that harvest festival on Triumph was the last time they were all together and well (well, before than yun bun du Saffron…Yolanda…whatever). The thought has a sort of magic in the memory.
[Part 2]