Fic: The Raggedy Edge (5/9)
Title: The Raggedy Edge
Author: Annerb
Summary: During a rescue mission gone awry, Sam and Jack end up stranded in another galaxy where they find themselves passengers on a ship called Serenity.
Wordcount: 40,000+
Rating/Warnings: Older teens for swearing in multiple languages, violence, torture, and such.
Categorization: SG-1/Firefly Crossover, AU, Action/Adventure, Drama
Pairings: BOB. Sam/Jack established relationship, hints of Daniel/Vala, Kaylee/Simon, Mal/Inara, and Jayne/Everyone (at least in his mind).
Season: Post-BDM for Firefly, early season 9 for SG-1
The Reckoning
The mule tucked into the ship, hitting the ramp with a thump. Before the machine even came to a full stop, Mal pulled his weapon and turned to Sam, Jayne following suit.
Sam didn’t react any that Mal could see, one arm still stretched across the prisoner, who was warily glancing from weapon to weapon.
The hull of the ship cut out the sound of the ferocious wind outside, dumping them into sudden silence as the doors slid shut and Zoe killed the engine.
“Your weapons,” Mal said, cocking his gun when Sam didn’t move quickly enough for his taste. Behind him, he felt Zoe’s steady presence as she stepped up behind him.
Sam gave an almost invisible nod to her friend, and both of them slowly pulled their weapons out, handing them butt first to Zoe.
“And the knife,” Mal said, gesturing at Sam’s boot.
Sam sighed, but complied, handing over the knife.
“Get us to the meeting point,” Mal said to Zoe, not bothering to watch as she slipped out of the room.
He then gestured for the two remaining women to get out of the Mule, following behind them towards the lounge outside the infirmary. Simon came out, looking surprised to find Mal holding Sam at gunpoint, but was wise enough not to say anything.
Mal flicked his gun towards the couch, indicating he wanted Sam to sit, but she just folded her arms across her chest, apparently having given him as much cooperation as she wanted for the day. “If you’re really going to shoot us, Mal,” she said, “could you just get it over with?”
Her tone told him she didn’t really believe he was going to shoot either of them, and damn her, she was mostly right. Mal slammed his gun back into his holster, taking a step towards her. “I’m of no mind to hit womenfolk, but you make it damn tempting!”
Mal’s rage only multiplied with the appearance of Jack behind her, looking grey around the gills and wobbly as all hell, but intent on watching his woman’s back.
“I’d like to see you give it a try,” Jack said with a grin that looked more like a grimace. “Even if just to see her kick your ass.”
Sam threw Jack a look over her shoulder before returning her regard to Mal. “I got the job done. I did everything you asked.”
“Plus a bit more,” Mal snapped, gesturing at the prisoner, “which is the problem I'm having.”
Sam’s lips pressed into a firm line, telling him she wasn’t inclined to give anything away. As for the female prisoner, Mal wasn’t convinced she was actually capable of speech, so silent was she.
Simple homesteaders, his ass.
“Give me one goddamn good reason not to vent you all out the airlock.”
“Ah, hell, Mal,” Jayne complained. “Let’s at least turn them in for the reward.”
Sam’s eyes widened a bit and Mal nodded. “Oh, yeah. We know all about the little bounty on your heads. You weren’t lying when you said you’re not the best of friends with the Alliance.”
“No, I wasn’t,” Sam admitted. “I sort of doubt you’re outraged on their behalf though.”
“Thousand credits ain’t no small lump of change. Care to give me a reason not to partake of this particular windfall?”
From the expression on her face, Mal was sure her answer was going to be scathing, only she never got the chance to voice it because the ship shuddered violently underneath them.
“We’ve got company, sir,” Zoe’s voice called over the comm.
Of course they did. Why was it that they could never just complete a simple job without all manner of complications mucking everything up?
“Jayne,” Mal said. “Lock them up someplace. I’ll decide what to do with them later.” The ship shuddered again. “If we survive, that is.”
“Why is everyone always shooting at us?” Jayne complained as he pulled his weapon on their three guests, waving them back into the room behind them.
Mal left him to it, running up the stairs two at a time. “Kaylee!” he hollered as he ran for the bridge.
“She’ll hold together, Cap’n!” she could be heard to yell back.
He hoped so.
+++
The lock slid home with a loud clunk and Vala fought back a beat of panic at once again being trapped, though the door looked flimsy enough, all things told. She took a moment to calculate the amount of force that kind of lock might take to burst, the exact angle needed to finesse it open and the exercise calmed her breathing enough for her take a step back, shuffling into the corner to watch her fellow cellmates move about the room.
Sam seemed to be taking their treatment in stride and Vala couldn’t see any other option than trusting her. For now.
“Jack,” Sam said, crossing over to the other person in the room, a man with the pinched look of recent illness and a scruffy mop of graying hair. Sam’s hands were gentle on him as she wrapped an arm around him. “Why don’t you sit down before you fall down?”
“I’m fine,” he grumbled, but he didn’t resist as she bullied him down onto the pallet, leaning back against the pillows with a sigh of relief.
“Jack O’Neill,” Vala said, breaking her long silence. Jack O’Neill was a name she heard almost as often as Sam Carter, back in the days she’d still been with Daniel.
The General looked up at her, tossing her a nod of acknowledgment and she could see it now, the steel and competence hidden under the flippancy. Dangerous under the wrong circumstances.
“Ms. Mal Doran,” he drawled. “Fancy running into you in this little corner of the universe.”
Sam stepped across the room, grabbing a canteen and taking a long swig before tossing it to Vala. Her fingers clenched around the object as she forced herself to drink slowly and calmly as if it hadn’t been a while since she last fully slaked her thirst.
“So, Vala,” Sam said, sitting down on the edge of the low bed next to Jack. Vala analyzed the way they sit close enough to touch, but not quite, some tiny sliver of distance there. “We need you to tell us everything that happened since the moment you put the stones in the Ancient device.”
Vala took one last small sip out of the canteen, leaving what she could, setting it down in an easily accessible spot. “You mean when the harmless communication device dropped us ass first in this insane galaxy?” she asked, keeping her voice light.
Sam’s lips curved into a half-smile, something soft there under the wryness that seemed to read as sympathy. Vala looked away from her.
“Pretty much, yeah,” Jack said.
“Where did you first appear?” Sam asked.
“Londinium,” Vala said, remembering the bustle and splendor of the huge city, the elegant, arcing skyscrapers that seemed to float above the grids of streets below. It was undeniably beautiful, but like most beautiful things, it turned out to be a lie.
“The capital city,” Sam said.
“Yes,” Vala confirmed.
It was Daniel and Vala’s bad luck that not only had the Ancient device in fact been a transporter (“Well done, Daniel.”), but that it had also dumped them, in full daylight, in the middle of a busy street. With surveillance footage and hundreds of eyewitnesses, it was hard to pretend they hadn’t just been unexpectedly dumped out of the sky. Added to that the fact that they’d landed a bit too close to the civilization’s Parliament and Vala and Daniel’s introduction to the Alliance had not been pristine from the start.
Vala sat down on the ledge behind her, looking down at her hands folded in her lap. Every single nail was broken and ragged, dark moons of filth at each tip. “We were taken into custody within fifteen minutes of appearing.”
“Alliance?” Jack asked, a rumble of distrust under the word telling her that he was already well aware of the many foibles of the Alliance.
Vala nodded.
They had been polite, but suspicious from the beginning and even Daniel had been smart enough to watch his tongue, no matter how seemingly civilized their hosts. It was hard to hide the truth though, not when they were so obviously alien and out of their depth. Not to mention that from the very onset this Alliance seemed to have had a rather large stick shoved up its ass. The delegation assigned to them mostly stared at Vala with appalled discomfort.
Vala pushed back to her feet, meandering the length of the room, her eyes sliding over every inch of the walls and ceilings. "They never trusted us from the beginning,” she said, “but that might have had something to do with the fact that we were lying to them. Their paranoia and fascist obsession with order were pretty obvious and Daniel thought it might be better not to tell them who we really were.”
“Yeah,” Sam said with a hollow laugh that echoed bitterly in the small space. “We tried that too, for all the good it did us.”
Vala shrugged. “At least they were predictable. At first.”
“What do you mean?”
Vala reached the end of the room, turning about to lean back against the wall. “About two months into our incarceration on Londinium, someone came to our cells in the middle of the night. Took us to a small moon they called Metis, and suddenly we were in a country estate instead of a city. They gave us bedrooms, real ones, without locks on the doors."
Jack and Sam shared a puzzled look. “Then what happened?” Sam prodded.
“They treated us like guests. Conversations, not inquisitions. All elegance and nice manners. It was almost enough to make us believe they had good intentions.” Almost. “Well, Daniel at least,” she amended with a flippant wave of her hand. “I’ve always been a bit more cynical myself.”
There was also the fact that their hosts clearly had little use for Vala. And if she liked to shock them just to blow off steam now and again, well, she’d always believed you could tell a lot more about a person from how they reacted to conflict rather than charm. She never missed the hardness of their expressions, the way they were capable of looking at Vala as a thing rather than a person.
She should have known then.
“Did you know who these people were?” Sam asked.
Vala shook her head. She wasn’t the one they’d been interested in. Daniel was the golden child, the one of interest. “They were real scholastic types. It was always texts and artifacts with them.”
“Daniel must have gotten along with them great,” Jack noted dryly.
Vala gave him a thin smile. “At first maybe.”
“At first?” he asked, one eyebrow lifting.
“We’d been there for maybe four months when everything changed. They separated us, and this time their questions weren’t nearly as…polite.” Vala paused, smoothing her breathing out and swallowing against the memory of their efficient, nasty little machines. “When it became clear I knew nothing of import, they shipped me off to Shanxi. Solitary confinement, just in case I proved more willing to discuss things with strangers. I never saw Daniel again.”
She lapsed back into silence then, with the stale taste of Shanxi sharp in her throat. She grabbed the canteen and took another heavy swallow. Sam and Jack were sharing some sort of unspoken conversation before turning back to look at Vala.
“Do you think Daniel is still alive?” Jack asked. Next to him, Sam flinched. His hand went to her back, the barest touch, comfort or apology maybe for the question, but the resolve on his face didn’t lessen.
Vala shrugged one shoulder. “As far as I know, Daniel is still playing happy scholars on Metis,” she answered flippantly, because the truth was she had no idea what might have befallen Daniel. She didn’t like to spend too much time thinking what might happen to him when they got tired of his lack of cooperation.
Jack didn’t seem to think that was any sort of answer though, his gaze shifting into something hard and piercing. Vala tried not to hate herself for looking away first. She’d been forcing herself to avoid that same question for months now. Because if Daniel was dead, then no one was ever coming, not even his long shot fantasy of friends who didn’t know the meaning of impossible. It was seductive, that fantasy, more than she ever wanted it to be.
But now she was staring that fairytale in the face and she was having a really hard time trusting it.
“They had no real reason to keep me alive,” Vala admitted. “But they did anyway, just on the small chance that I might know something useful to them in the future. That tells me they aren’t the sort to waste.”
It was the only answer she’d ever been able to come up with. Daniel was alive. He had to be.
“Okay,” Jack said. “Thank you.”
Vala pulled her sleeve down over her hand. She’d almost forgotten how cold space could be. “Do you have any food?” she asked, keeping her voice even and matter of fact.
“Of course,” Sam said in a rush, her expressive face betraying her once again. Pity and horror, and a sense that she might know what Vala had been through. She didn’t have a clue.
Vala took the ration bar, eating one small square and pocketing the rest by instinct.
Sam and Jack started rehashing everything Vala told them. Vala watched them and reminded herself that for all Daniel trusted these people, she didn’t know anything about them. Didn’t know what they might be willing to trade-or sacrifice-to get Daniel back, including her.
Vala sat back in the corner, running through all the people she’d seen on the ship so far, memorizing names and filtering impressions, working each one like a puzzle piece, playing out her options, any way for her to land on her feet.
There was one thing Vala did know. She was finally free of that sucking black hole of a prison, and she had zero intention of ever going back.
+++
No one came back for them, but the fact that the ship was still in one piece seemed to bode well for the outcome of the battle. Now they just needed to wait and see if Mal would follow up on his threat to vent them all out into space.
Sam figured the more time that passed the better Mal’s temper would be. Or at least they could hope.
Sam spent the last few hours jotting down everything they’d learned from Vala into her notebook, asking for occasional points of clarification, or Jack’s opinion about something. The data under her fingers was beginning to take on a pattern of sorts, but she still didn’t have it quite pinned down. Too many things still didn’t make sense.
“Did you ever happen to see anything at all that might be Ancient while you were on Londinium?” Sam asked Vala.
Vala had gone quiet a long time ago, now lying on her back on the futon they’d dragged back to the other side of the room for her. She lifted one hand in the air as if studying her fingernails. “Not that I recall,” she said, “but I wasn’t really looking for it either.”
Yeah, Sam thought. From what Vala had told them, she and Daniel had had a lot more on their minds than the various quirks of this galaxy. “So the first time you saw anything Ancient was on Metis.”
Vala’s arm dropped back down. “Yes.”
Sam frowned, biting on the end of her pen. She could feel Jack shift next to her.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“I’m wondering why Mal and his crew had never seen anything like the security system on Shanxi before. From what I gather, they have more than enough experience with the Alliance to know their systems backwards and forwards.”
“Because it wasn’t Alliance?” Jack guessed.
It made a strange sort of sense. The special systems, Daniel and Vala’s mysterious removal from an Alliance facility in the middle of the night. “And if Shanxi is as much of a backwater as Mal made it sound, why is there such a sophisticated system in place?”
“There’s something there,” Jack surmises.
Sam nodded. “I think it probably wasn’t an accident that Vala was being held there too.”
“So you’re thinking that Shanxi is being controlled by the same people as Metis. The people holding Daniel.”
“It’s possible,” Sam said. She looked over at Jack. “Which means, in all possibility, the people Mal just stole from were not the Alliance, but Daniel’s captors.”
He slid her a look. “You’re saying we need to know what Mal took.”
“Yeah. I think so.”
Jack sighed. “Of course we do.”
It was almost five full hours before Mal returned, leading them all out into the small living space next to the infirmary. Sam sank down on the couch next to Jack, Vala remaining back by the door, as if doing her best to be a fly on the wall.
“I hope you’ve given a bit more thought to being cooperative,” Mal said, Zoe standing silently next to him. He turned to look at Vala. “You can start by telling us who you are.”
“She’s with us,” Jack said before Vala could answer. “That’s really all you need to know.”
“Your friend got a tongue?” Mal asked.
Vala smiled, her entire demeanor shifting, so much so that Sam had the feeling she was looking at an entirely new person. Vala tossed an appraising glance in Jayne’s direction where he hulked in the background. “Sure do, handsome. And I know how to use it too.”
Jayne brightened measurably, the arm crossed protectively over his monster of a gun flexing.
Apparently Daniel’s descriptions of Vala had not been exaggerated even a tiny bit.
Mal looked surprised and not a little smug at this unexpected outburst. “Funny,” he drawled, “Never thought such upstanding citizens as yourselves would have friends in such fine places as a prison.”
Shit. Sam knew that crack about criminals and low lifes was going to come back and bite her in the ass. “Look,” she said, deciding sticking as close to the truth as possible might be the best tactic. “I didn’t know Vala was there until I saw the feed on Shanxi. I couldn’t just leave her.”
“I believe I remember making it very clear what would happen if you did anything to endanger this crew.”
“And I didn’t,” Sam said. “We got away clean.” She deliberately didn’t look at Vala, who was the only one who probably understood just how graceless their exit really had been.
Mal took a step toward Sam. “If’n you don’t count the Alliance cruiser that almost nabbed us in orbit!”
Sam shared a glance with Jack. “Are you sure they were Alliance?” she asked.
Mal dragged a hand over his face, a gesture of raw frustration with the direction this conversation was going, no doubt. “I think I can be trusted to know what an Alliance scout blasting across my gorram prow looks like!”
“Of course,” Sam said, leaning back against the couch, her hands held up in a belated attempt to appease the man currently deciding their fate.
Mal, for his part, looked like he was beginning to get one hell of a headache. “Put them back in the room,” he said wearily, waving Jayne forward.
“Mal,” Sam called out to forestall his departure. “I need to know what you took from Shanxi.”
Mal looked heavenward for a moment, mumbling something under his breath. “Just why in the hell would I tell you that?”
Sam didn’t really have an answer for that, darting a glance at Jack, who just shook his head.
“I know you don’t have any reason to trust us,” Sam said. “I just…I think there’s a lot more going on here than it seems. You should be careful.”
For a second it looked like Mal was going to brush her off with yet another sharp retort, but instead he just shook his head. “Look,” he said, sounding tired. “We finish up this job, do the drop, and then we’ll let you off at the next nearest port, no harm done. Okay?”
It was probably the best they could hope for, all things considered.
“Okay,” Sam agreed, watching Mal disappear back up towards the bridge.
She just had a bad feeling it wouldn’t be that easy.
+++
They’ve just entered the outer edge of the Kalidasa system, a short jot out from Aberdeen when Serenity swooped to a stop with all the grace of having dropped the engine some space back. Mal looked down at the controls in his hands in confusion, already reaching for the comm to holler at Kaylee when he realized his control had been preempted by the other station.
Mal looked over to see River in the secondary seat, something she was wont to do from time to time. She had one bare foot up on the edge of her chair, her fingers tight around the controls.
“Sir?” Zoe asked, appearing up on deck, no doubt also wondering about their sudden stop. She followed Mal’s gaze to River.
“This is wrong. It’s all wrong,” River said, lifting up to press her fingers against the glass. “Greedy hands and hungry eyes-only hid from sight.”
Mal couldn’t pretend to understand half of what came out of River’s mouth at any given time, but he knew that tone, the pose of her body, the way she looked like she’d love to fold back inside herself if such a thing were possible. He knew enough to take caution when she offered it.
Mal looked at Zoe. “Let’s contact Miles just to make sure everything is as it should be.”
Zoe nodded her agreement, crossing over to the controls. A few moments later, the broad, homely face of their contact filled the small screen.
“Hey, Miles,” Mal greeted him, noticing the rather fine weave of his shirt that said he’d been moving up in the worlds these days. “We’re a few hours out. Just wanted to let you know everything is still on schedule.”
On the other side of the deck, River started a low crooning sound under her breath, shaking her head back and forth.
“Great to hear,” Miles said congenially, his face pressed right up close to the screen. “Meet at the usual spot, eh?”
“Sure thing,” Mal said. “That sister of yours gonna be around?”
Miles’ easy-going expression broke for a moment, something of rage building in the crease between his eyes before it wiped clean. “Ah, Mal,” he said, his voice chillingly satisfied right under the forced pleasantness. “You always were one to go looking for trouble.”
Mal smirked. “What can I say, sometimes trouble just finds me irresistible.”
Miles’ smile only widened, any more unpleasant emotions only betrayed by the slight tic in his jaw.
“See you in a few hours,” Mal said, the smile slipping off his face the moment the comm went dark.
“He’s setting us up,” Zoe commented.
Mal nodded, dragging a hand over his face. Miles had a notorious temper and a not-so-forgotten past with Mal. He should have blown up at Mal, told him to take the product and shove it up his ass, anything other than calm pleasantries. Miles clearly wanted the deal to go down, was itching for it.
There was no way they could go in for the drop now.
The one annoyance in the whole thing that lingered was that Miles was a browncoat. He may have a temper like a son of a bitch, and the manners of a mud farmer, but nothing in God’s great ‘verse would make Miles cooperate with the Alliance. Nothing.
‘Are you sure they were Alliance?’ Sam’s helpful voice asked once again in his mind.
“Lao tyen yeh,” he muttered, “xianzai wo pai.”
“Not sure that will help, sir,” Zoe said.
A hot product and no one to load it off on. Alliance a few steps behind, a new player two steps ahead. And three strangers on his boat. It was enough to make his neck itch.
“What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?” he asked.
Zoe shifted next to him, her voice dropping an octave. “I think I know just who to ask.”
Mal supposed he should just be thankful she hadn’t said ‘I told you so.’ He really had to stop picking up strays; it just never ended well.
He felt the ship hum back to life beneath him, glancing over to find River looking to him, a question in her eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “Get us out of here.”
Anywhere but here.
Under her guidance, Serenity slipped back out into the black, smooth and graceful in a way that was unique only to those two. River lacked the inventiveness and daredevil speed of Wash, but she had a way with Serenity, not so much commanding her as simply letting the ship have her head. He could feel it, the way Serenity was different under her hands.
He turned to Zoe. “Let’s go talk to our guests.”
Mal had this whole plan about how he was gonna approach Jack and Sam, how he would work his way carefully around to the problem at hand without revealing too much because the last thing he needed was for them to have the upper hand.
Then he opened the door, saw them sitting there with their prisoner friend and just blurted, “Would someone care to tell me just what the wuh de ma is going on?”
So much for that plan.
Sam pushed to her feet. “What’s happened?”
“The gorram buy is a trap.”
Sam and Jack shared a glance. Mal did not like the way they looked completely unsurprised.
“I’m gettin’ real tired of this damn game. We all know you ain’t homesteaders. So if you know what the hell is happening, now if the time to tell me.”
Sam nodded. "It’s a long story. But if you show me what you took, maybe I can tell you what you’ve gotten yourself into." All of her bluster was gone now, just a weary sort of acceptance in its place and for some reason that put him at more ease than anything else this day had.
Or it could just be they both knew that he was hell and gone out of options.
He nodded at Zoe. “Bring it up to the mess.”
It took both Zoe and Jayne to heave the crate up on the table. Kaylee and Simon wandered in right behind, and now there were eight of them huddled around the table together staring at it. Not looking inside had been one of the stipulations Miles had passed on to them, giving them only a lot number. Just more reason to take a look.
“What’s going on, Cap’n?” Kaylee asked.
“Hopefully we’re about to find out,” he said, grabbing a crow bar and levering up the lid on the crate. The wood gave away with a loud groan, falling flat on all sides so that the lump of straw spilled out over the table. Something large and dirt-colored was visible here and there. He reached out to knock the straw clear when Sam grabbed for his arm.
“Wait,” she said, something in her voice automatically making him comply. “Let’s be careful with this until we know what it is.”
Mal removed his hands, but refused to back away as Sam carefully began removing the straw while touching the thing as little as possible. When it was finally clear, she stepped back a moment, giving them all a clear view of the strange stone sculpture. It was about three feet wide and covered in characters Mal had never seen, set up with buttons like a rudimentary data station.
Sam finally reached out a hand and touched it like it was a holy thing or worse, a bomb. Vala and Jack stepped forward until all three of them were crowded around the thing.
“Is that what I think it is?” Jack asked.
Sam nodded.
“Ancient?” Vala asked.
“Yeah,” Sam confirmed, her fingers still sliding along the contraption’s edges.
Jack frowned, taking a deliberate step back that did nothing to calm Mal’s nerves. “What is it doing here?”
Sam shook her head. “I have no idea.”
“This can’t be coincidence,” Jack pointed out.
Mal had had enough. “What the hell are you people talking about?”
Jack looked up from the object just long enough to send Mal a sardonic glance. "Oh, it's safe to say you've bitten off way more than you can handle here, Reynolds."
Mal crossed his arms over his chest. “I think it’s about time you told us who you really are.”
"We're the ones who might actually be able to get you out of this mess," Jack said. "If you’re lucky."
Mal was beginning to get back in the mood for yelling when Sam finally jumped in.
“You’re right,” she said. “We’re not homesteaders.”
“Oh, really.”
Sam nodded. “We’re also not exactly from around here.”
“Where exactly are you from?”
She took a breath. “A planet called Earth.”
“You mean Earth that was?” Kaylee asked, confusion tingeing her voice.
Sam looked over at Jack and he shrugged. “No," she said. "Earth that is.”
Kaylee’s mouth dropped open.
“Earth ain’t been habitable in centuries,” Jayne pointed out.
“Our Earth is, last time I checked,” Jack said.
“Your Earth?”
“Look,” Sam said, leaning over the table. “We don’t know anything about the Earth from your mythology, whether it’s the same one, or even what your civilization is doing here. We just know that we came from a neighboring galaxy where there is also an Earth.”
“Oh,” Jayne said, “didn’t know there’d be bedtime stories. Let me go get my blankie.”
Sam ignored him, pointing at the strange contraption. “This is an advanced piece of technology made by a race of beings we call the Ancients. A similar piece of technology built by them accidentally transported Vala and another one of our friends to your galaxy. We came here to find them.”
Mal glanced at Vala just quick enough to see the look of surprise on her face, though he couldn’t be sure if that was a reaction to Sam’s honesty, or just being called friend. Catching him watching her, Vala’s expression seamlessly morphed into something coy and practiced.
“You’re talking about intergalactic travel,” Kaylee said, tearing Mal’s attention from Vala. “That would take lifetimes. Even moving between solar systems can take generations!”
Sam turned to Kaylee, her face softening and eyes lighting up with something that seemed to completely transform her face. “We had a ship equipped with a hyperdrive.”
Kaylee plopped down into the seat next to Sam. “But that’s-you can’t,” she sputtered, looking like she was getting a short circuit in her brain. She reached for Sam’s arm, her eyes wide as they leaned into each other like girls sharing gossip. “How far did you come? How long did it take?”
Sam smiled. “From the edge of our galaxy to the edge of yours is about 4.2 million light-years. It took us four weeks to cross.”
Kaylee’s mouth gaped a moment before she sat up real straight. “Can I see it?”
“What?”
“Your ship!”
Jack let out a huff. “You’ll have to ask the Alliance. They were kind enough to take it off our hands a while back.”
“If they even still have it,” Sam said. “I imagine our new friends could have found a way to get their hands on it.”
“Hold on,” Mal said, waving his hands in the air. “Are we really accepting that these three came from another galaxy?”
Kaylee shrugged one shoulder. “People have been hypothesizing ‘bout hyperdrives for ages ‘n ages. Never got it to work, but that don’t mean it’s impossible.”
Sam turned back to Mal. “If you think we’re lying, just ask River.”
Mal didn’t need to do that though, because despite the insanity of their story, things were finally beginning to make sense. A twisted, headachy sort of sense, but sense nonetheless.
“Say I believe you. What does any of this have to do with us?”
“Because this artifact tells me that the people holding our friend prisoner are the same ones you just stole from.”
“They’re gonna want their stuff back,” Jack helpfully supplied, like Mal really needed the reminder that he’d just earned Serenity yet another enemy.
“They know who you are, wouldn’t you at least like to return the favor?” Sam asked.
Mal crossed his arms over his chest. “What are you suggesting?”
“That for the moment our interests lie in the same place.”
Wonderful. And just when he’d grown so fond of the idea of dumping them off at the first backwater hellhole he could find.
“Help us rescue our friend, and in exchange we will help you figure out exactly what you’ve gotten yourselves into.”
"And in exchange for risking my crew?"
Sam didn’t seem to have a ready answer for that, apparently scrambling for something until her eyes came to rest on the alien device. She reached out and tapped it. "How about I teach you how to use this?"
Mal glanced down at the strange object. "That depends. What is it?"
Sam smiled. "Jack, would you mind?" she asked, canting her head towards the object.
He slid her a glance, a question there, but she just shrugged as if asking he if had a better idea. Reluctantly, Jack reached out and touched the device. Almost immediately the damn thing lit up, strange letters and shapes floating above it. Jayne jumped back from the table, Kaylee just staring up at it in awed fascination.
Mal's eyes darted to Sam's in alarm, but she was intently inspecting the device, poking at various buttons with her bottom lip between her teeth as if trying to remember an old school lesson.
“I think that should--,” Sam started to say.
And then, to Mal’s astonishment, Sam and Jack disappeared. No poof or slight of hand, they were just gone, the machine still happily humming along.
"What the hell!" Jayne exclaimed, waving his rifle trough the space Sam had inhabited only moments before. "Where'd they go?"
Vala, for her part, didn’t look so much alarmed as covetous, leaning in to take a much closer look at the contraption on the table.
A moment later, the machine turned off, Jack reappearing in his chair, only with Sam nowhere to be seen.
Someone tapped on Mal’s shoulder, nearly making him jump out of his skin. He spun on his heel to find Sam standing behind him.
"So," she said, canting her head to one side. "Do we have a deal?"
Damn right they did.
+++
Simon poked gently at the pink skin beginning to knit together under the dark stain of careful sutures across Jack’s torso. All things considered, the wound was healing better than Simon could have hoped. Jack seemed to have bounced back from blood loss quicker than he would expect from a man half his age.
“You done yet, doc?” Jack demanded, his voice surly. Simon didn’t take it personally; he’d seen enough people deal badly with being a patient to understand that it was the loss of control that ate at Jack, not the doctor per se.
“These sutures aren’t quite ready to come out,” Simon commented, carefully replacing the bandage with a fresh one. The surrounding skin was cool under his fingers, with no signs of blotchiness. “But I’m still not seeing any signs of infection, so that’s good news.”
Jack sighed. “They itch,” he complained. “Can’t you just take them out?”
“No, and neither can you,” Simon said, his voice firm. Something told him Jack was exactly the sort of disgruntled patient to snip out his own stitches when no one was watching.
Movement outside the infirmary caught Simon’s attention. Just River’s eyes could be seen over the edge of the window, peering in on them as if a curious child at a zoo.
“Doc?” Jack asked, turning to look in the same direction as Simon.
River’s head dropped out of sight.
“I think she’s scared of you,” Simon commented, keeping his voice low and even. People weren’t River’s specialty, especially strangers, but the way she’d been skulking around the ship since Jack and Sam appeared, something about it just struck Simon as strange, like she was half-fascinated and half-panicked. When he asked her about it, the most he could ever get out of her was that Jack “sounded different,” whatever that meant.
It was easy to imagine something very dark festering in this man, his body spoke volumes about a rough life.
Jack met his gaze head on and Simon had the feeling his brotherly concern was pretty transparent. His tone, when he spoke, lacked all of the previous surliness, instead soft and earnest. “She doesn’t have any reason to be.” His lips twisted then, into a smile that managed to be wry and self-depreciating. “Though I can’t vouch for what insanity might be hiding up in this old rock of mine.”
Simon didn’t get a chance to respond to that, as Mal and Sam came in then, mid-argument about something or other as usual.
Mal seemed to be chasing after Sam, his voice overly loud. “Metis ain’t a place you just sidle up to and knock on the door!”
“I understand that,” Sam said, the enormous stress she was under clear in her voice. Simon’s practiced eye took in the various signals that she wasn’t spending much time sleeping lately, let alone getting proper nutrition. “Vala knows the place, can direct us.”
“Excuse me if I don’t find that the comfort it should be. I usually find random strangers picked up from prison so trustworthy.”
“Simon,” Sam said, giving him a strained smile and pointedly turning her back on Mal as she came up to stand next to Jack. “How is our patient today?”
“He’s fine,” Jack insisted, sounding disgruntled. “And sitting right here.”
Sam ignored that, turning to Simon for confirmation.
“Right, Doc?” Jack said, clearly willing Simon to be on his side.
Simon refused to get in the middle of that tug of war, taking a moment to finish off the bandage. Pulling off his gloves, he said, “Well, now that he’s gone a few solid days without ripping his stitches out, we are on a much better road to recovery.”
“See?” Jack said. “I’ll be right as rain by the time we reach Metis.”
“That’s not what I-,” Simon began to say, only to be interrupted by Mal.
“Best not to risk it,” he said. “Jack’s injury was serious after all. He’ll be much safer onboard.”
Mal and Sam stared across the bed at each other, and Simon didn’t think he imagined the way the tension ratcheted up in the room. There was some sort of tug of war or silent battle of wills going on that Simon wasn’t sure he understood the nuance of. Certainly this was more than Mal showing concern for Jack’s health.
“Jack stays here,” Mal reiterated in that ‘don’t mistake this for anything other than an order’ tone of his that Simon knew only too well. It occurred to him then that keeping Jack on board was a ploy to make sure Sam stuck to plan, an insurance policy of sorts. No more surprises. Mal always did hate surprises.
The staring contest continued another beat. Sam was the first to look away.
“The hell I will,” Jack snapped, probably understandably annoyed at being discussed like he was a piece of meat. He yanked his shirt down and hopped off the bed without any regard for his wound and Simon tried not to wince at the careless movement. On the road to healing was not the same thing as healed.
“Jack,” Sam said, one hand lifting to her forehead like she was suffering sinus pressure.
“If you think I am letting you go out on a job alone with these people again…”
And that was it. Simon could practically see her temper snapping. “Excuse us,” she said, pulling Jack’s arm hard enough that he had no option other than to follow her out of the room.
Simon glanced at Mal, but he just shrugged and unabashedly strolled up to lean against the doorframe to get a better view of the unfolding drama.
Sam had pulled Jack as far away from the infirmary as they could get. With their heads now close together, Sam was speaking insistently, only to have Jack bark something that made her wince, her back straightening as if coming to a reluctant sort of attention. Recovering, she shook her head, emphasizing whatever she was saying with a swift jab of her finger to Jack’s chest.
All of which only served to make Jack even more than irate, and Simon tensed for some sort of epic explosion of temper. There was an explosion all right, just not exactly the sort he was expecting.
Jack reached for her, dragging her up against him, and Simon took a step as if to intervene but rather than shaking some sense into her, or harming her in any way, Jack simply kissed her. Not that it was a simple kiss by any means, but a hard one as if he was imprinting her in his mind.
Just when Simon was beginning to think it was long past time to stop spying, Jack broke the kiss. With his head still resting against hers, he lifted one hand to her cheek as he said something so softly that not even the tiniest rumble of sound made it to where Simon and Mal stood.
Sam’s body seemed to bow into his as she touched his hand on her cheek, her fingers squeezing around his as she nodded firmly, like making a pledge.
Still looking grim, but appeased, Jack pulled his hand back and stepped around her, disappearing back into the guest quarters. Sam stood there a moment longer against the wall, like she’d had all the wind taken out of her sails, one hand pressed to her lips.
Then she turned and saw Mal and Simon watching her, her expression shifting to hard and guarded once more. Simon felt his cheeks burn with guilt for intruding on something that was obviously private. Then again, in a place like Serenity, there wasn’t much privacy to be found. For anyone.
Sam approached, coming to a stop next to Mal. “He stays,” she confirmed.
Mal nodded. “Then I’d say we’ve got ourselves a deal.” With that, he pushed off the doorjamb and headed back up towards the bridge.
Sam watched him go, her hand once again massaging at her forehead.
“Headache?” Simon asked, ushering her back into the infirmary. “The Captain tends to have that effect on people.”
Sam let out a soft huff of amusement. “I bet.”
Simon pulled open a cabinet. “Let me give you something for the headache.”
“No, it’s fine.”
“Maybe something to help you sleep?”
She looked up at him in surprise, as if wondering how he could know she wasn’t sleeping.
Simon gestured at himself. “Doctor, remember?”
She gave him a brittle smile. “I can’t afford any weird side effects right now,” she said. “We still have no idea how much our physiology differs from your own.”
Simon conceded the point, not particularly interested in having someone else try to kill him in a drugged fit. Something told him Sam could be just as dangerous as Jack when she needed to be, even if it was hard to imagine looking at her now.
“You’re going to have a hard time looking out for everyone if you don’t take care of yourself,” Simon observed.
“Thanks for the concern, Simon,” she said in a way he knew meant she had no intention of taking his advice. She gestured over her shoulder. “I’ve got a lot of work to do before we reach Metis.”
“Of course,” Simon said.
River appeared in the doorway then, her eyes following Sam as she departed. “She don’t know how to bend.”
Simon nodded. “Maybe she should learn.”
River’s head tilted to the side, her hand slipping into his. “She will. Everyone does.”
That was what he was afraid of.
:: next::
Author: Annerb
Summary: During a rescue mission gone awry, Sam and Jack end up stranded in another galaxy where they find themselves passengers on a ship called Serenity.
Wordcount: 40,000+
Rating/Warnings: Older teens for swearing in multiple languages, violence, torture, and such.
Categorization: SG-1/Firefly Crossover, AU, Action/Adventure, Drama
Pairings: BOB. Sam/Jack established relationship, hints of Daniel/Vala, Kaylee/Simon, Mal/Inara, and Jayne/Everyone (at least in his mind).
Season: Post-BDM for Firefly, early season 9 for SG-1
The Reckoning
The mule tucked into the ship, hitting the ramp with a thump. Before the machine even came to a full stop, Mal pulled his weapon and turned to Sam, Jayne following suit.
Sam didn’t react any that Mal could see, one arm still stretched across the prisoner, who was warily glancing from weapon to weapon.
The hull of the ship cut out the sound of the ferocious wind outside, dumping them into sudden silence as the doors slid shut and Zoe killed the engine.
“Your weapons,” Mal said, cocking his gun when Sam didn’t move quickly enough for his taste. Behind him, he felt Zoe’s steady presence as she stepped up behind him.
Sam gave an almost invisible nod to her friend, and both of them slowly pulled their weapons out, handing them butt first to Zoe.
“And the knife,” Mal said, gesturing at Sam’s boot.
Sam sighed, but complied, handing over the knife.
“Get us to the meeting point,” Mal said to Zoe, not bothering to watch as she slipped out of the room.
He then gestured for the two remaining women to get out of the Mule, following behind them towards the lounge outside the infirmary. Simon came out, looking surprised to find Mal holding Sam at gunpoint, but was wise enough not to say anything.
Mal flicked his gun towards the couch, indicating he wanted Sam to sit, but she just folded her arms across her chest, apparently having given him as much cooperation as she wanted for the day. “If you’re really going to shoot us, Mal,” she said, “could you just get it over with?”
Her tone told him she didn’t really believe he was going to shoot either of them, and damn her, she was mostly right. Mal slammed his gun back into his holster, taking a step towards her. “I’m of no mind to hit womenfolk, but you make it damn tempting!”
Mal’s rage only multiplied with the appearance of Jack behind her, looking grey around the gills and wobbly as all hell, but intent on watching his woman’s back.
“I’d like to see you give it a try,” Jack said with a grin that looked more like a grimace. “Even if just to see her kick your ass.”
Sam threw Jack a look over her shoulder before returning her regard to Mal. “I got the job done. I did everything you asked.”
“Plus a bit more,” Mal snapped, gesturing at the prisoner, “which is the problem I'm having.”
Sam’s lips pressed into a firm line, telling him she wasn’t inclined to give anything away. As for the female prisoner, Mal wasn’t convinced she was actually capable of speech, so silent was she.
Simple homesteaders, his ass.
“Give me one goddamn good reason not to vent you all out the airlock.”
“Ah, hell, Mal,” Jayne complained. “Let’s at least turn them in for the reward.”
Sam’s eyes widened a bit and Mal nodded. “Oh, yeah. We know all about the little bounty on your heads. You weren’t lying when you said you’re not the best of friends with the Alliance.”
“No, I wasn’t,” Sam admitted. “I sort of doubt you’re outraged on their behalf though.”
“Thousand credits ain’t no small lump of change. Care to give me a reason not to partake of this particular windfall?”
From the expression on her face, Mal was sure her answer was going to be scathing, only she never got the chance to voice it because the ship shuddered violently underneath them.
“We’ve got company, sir,” Zoe’s voice called over the comm.
Of course they did. Why was it that they could never just complete a simple job without all manner of complications mucking everything up?
“Jayne,” Mal said. “Lock them up someplace. I’ll decide what to do with them later.” The ship shuddered again. “If we survive, that is.”
“Why is everyone always shooting at us?” Jayne complained as he pulled his weapon on their three guests, waving them back into the room behind them.
Mal left him to it, running up the stairs two at a time. “Kaylee!” he hollered as he ran for the bridge.
“She’ll hold together, Cap’n!” she could be heard to yell back.
He hoped so.
+++
The lock slid home with a loud clunk and Vala fought back a beat of panic at once again being trapped, though the door looked flimsy enough, all things told. She took a moment to calculate the amount of force that kind of lock might take to burst, the exact angle needed to finesse it open and the exercise calmed her breathing enough for her take a step back, shuffling into the corner to watch her fellow cellmates move about the room.
Sam seemed to be taking their treatment in stride and Vala couldn’t see any other option than trusting her. For now.
“Jack,” Sam said, crossing over to the other person in the room, a man with the pinched look of recent illness and a scruffy mop of graying hair. Sam’s hands were gentle on him as she wrapped an arm around him. “Why don’t you sit down before you fall down?”
“I’m fine,” he grumbled, but he didn’t resist as she bullied him down onto the pallet, leaning back against the pillows with a sigh of relief.
“Jack O’Neill,” Vala said, breaking her long silence. Jack O’Neill was a name she heard almost as often as Sam Carter, back in the days she’d still been with Daniel.
The General looked up at her, tossing her a nod of acknowledgment and she could see it now, the steel and competence hidden under the flippancy. Dangerous under the wrong circumstances.
“Ms. Mal Doran,” he drawled. “Fancy running into you in this little corner of the universe.”
Sam stepped across the room, grabbing a canteen and taking a long swig before tossing it to Vala. Her fingers clenched around the object as she forced herself to drink slowly and calmly as if it hadn’t been a while since she last fully slaked her thirst.
“So, Vala,” Sam said, sitting down on the edge of the low bed next to Jack. Vala analyzed the way they sit close enough to touch, but not quite, some tiny sliver of distance there. “We need you to tell us everything that happened since the moment you put the stones in the Ancient device.”
Vala took one last small sip out of the canteen, leaving what she could, setting it down in an easily accessible spot. “You mean when the harmless communication device dropped us ass first in this insane galaxy?” she asked, keeping her voice light.
Sam’s lips curved into a half-smile, something soft there under the wryness that seemed to read as sympathy. Vala looked away from her.
“Pretty much, yeah,” Jack said.
“Where did you first appear?” Sam asked.
“Londinium,” Vala said, remembering the bustle and splendor of the huge city, the elegant, arcing skyscrapers that seemed to float above the grids of streets below. It was undeniably beautiful, but like most beautiful things, it turned out to be a lie.
“The capital city,” Sam said.
“Yes,” Vala confirmed.
It was Daniel and Vala’s bad luck that not only had the Ancient device in fact been a transporter (“Well done, Daniel.”), but that it had also dumped them, in full daylight, in the middle of a busy street. With surveillance footage and hundreds of eyewitnesses, it was hard to pretend they hadn’t just been unexpectedly dumped out of the sky. Added to that the fact that they’d landed a bit too close to the civilization’s Parliament and Vala and Daniel’s introduction to the Alliance had not been pristine from the start.
Vala sat down on the ledge behind her, looking down at her hands folded in her lap. Every single nail was broken and ragged, dark moons of filth at each tip. “We were taken into custody within fifteen minutes of appearing.”
“Alliance?” Jack asked, a rumble of distrust under the word telling her that he was already well aware of the many foibles of the Alliance.
Vala nodded.
They had been polite, but suspicious from the beginning and even Daniel had been smart enough to watch his tongue, no matter how seemingly civilized their hosts. It was hard to hide the truth though, not when they were so obviously alien and out of their depth. Not to mention that from the very onset this Alliance seemed to have had a rather large stick shoved up its ass. The delegation assigned to them mostly stared at Vala with appalled discomfort.
Vala pushed back to her feet, meandering the length of the room, her eyes sliding over every inch of the walls and ceilings. "They never trusted us from the beginning,” she said, “but that might have had something to do with the fact that we were lying to them. Their paranoia and fascist obsession with order were pretty obvious and Daniel thought it might be better not to tell them who we really were.”
“Yeah,” Sam said with a hollow laugh that echoed bitterly in the small space. “We tried that too, for all the good it did us.”
Vala shrugged. “At least they were predictable. At first.”
“What do you mean?”
Vala reached the end of the room, turning about to lean back against the wall. “About two months into our incarceration on Londinium, someone came to our cells in the middle of the night. Took us to a small moon they called Metis, and suddenly we were in a country estate instead of a city. They gave us bedrooms, real ones, without locks on the doors."
Jack and Sam shared a puzzled look. “Then what happened?” Sam prodded.
“They treated us like guests. Conversations, not inquisitions. All elegance and nice manners. It was almost enough to make us believe they had good intentions.” Almost. “Well, Daniel at least,” she amended with a flippant wave of her hand. “I’ve always been a bit more cynical myself.”
There was also the fact that their hosts clearly had little use for Vala. And if she liked to shock them just to blow off steam now and again, well, she’d always believed you could tell a lot more about a person from how they reacted to conflict rather than charm. She never missed the hardness of their expressions, the way they were capable of looking at Vala as a thing rather than a person.
She should have known then.
“Did you know who these people were?” Sam asked.
Vala shook her head. She wasn’t the one they’d been interested in. Daniel was the golden child, the one of interest. “They were real scholastic types. It was always texts and artifacts with them.”
“Daniel must have gotten along with them great,” Jack noted dryly.
Vala gave him a thin smile. “At first maybe.”
“At first?” he asked, one eyebrow lifting.
“We’d been there for maybe four months when everything changed. They separated us, and this time their questions weren’t nearly as…polite.” Vala paused, smoothing her breathing out and swallowing against the memory of their efficient, nasty little machines. “When it became clear I knew nothing of import, they shipped me off to Shanxi. Solitary confinement, just in case I proved more willing to discuss things with strangers. I never saw Daniel again.”
She lapsed back into silence then, with the stale taste of Shanxi sharp in her throat. She grabbed the canteen and took another heavy swallow. Sam and Jack were sharing some sort of unspoken conversation before turning back to look at Vala.
“Do you think Daniel is still alive?” Jack asked. Next to him, Sam flinched. His hand went to her back, the barest touch, comfort or apology maybe for the question, but the resolve on his face didn’t lessen.
Vala shrugged one shoulder. “As far as I know, Daniel is still playing happy scholars on Metis,” she answered flippantly, because the truth was she had no idea what might have befallen Daniel. She didn’t like to spend too much time thinking what might happen to him when they got tired of his lack of cooperation.
Jack didn’t seem to think that was any sort of answer though, his gaze shifting into something hard and piercing. Vala tried not to hate herself for looking away first. She’d been forcing herself to avoid that same question for months now. Because if Daniel was dead, then no one was ever coming, not even his long shot fantasy of friends who didn’t know the meaning of impossible. It was seductive, that fantasy, more than she ever wanted it to be.
But now she was staring that fairytale in the face and she was having a really hard time trusting it.
“They had no real reason to keep me alive,” Vala admitted. “But they did anyway, just on the small chance that I might know something useful to them in the future. That tells me they aren’t the sort to waste.”
It was the only answer she’d ever been able to come up with. Daniel was alive. He had to be.
“Okay,” Jack said. “Thank you.”
Vala pulled her sleeve down over her hand. She’d almost forgotten how cold space could be. “Do you have any food?” she asked, keeping her voice even and matter of fact.
“Of course,” Sam said in a rush, her expressive face betraying her once again. Pity and horror, and a sense that she might know what Vala had been through. She didn’t have a clue.
Vala took the ration bar, eating one small square and pocketing the rest by instinct.
Sam and Jack started rehashing everything Vala told them. Vala watched them and reminded herself that for all Daniel trusted these people, she didn’t know anything about them. Didn’t know what they might be willing to trade-or sacrifice-to get Daniel back, including her.
Vala sat back in the corner, running through all the people she’d seen on the ship so far, memorizing names and filtering impressions, working each one like a puzzle piece, playing out her options, any way for her to land on her feet.
There was one thing Vala did know. She was finally free of that sucking black hole of a prison, and she had zero intention of ever going back.
+++
No one came back for them, but the fact that the ship was still in one piece seemed to bode well for the outcome of the battle. Now they just needed to wait and see if Mal would follow up on his threat to vent them all out into space.
Sam figured the more time that passed the better Mal’s temper would be. Or at least they could hope.
Sam spent the last few hours jotting down everything they’d learned from Vala into her notebook, asking for occasional points of clarification, or Jack’s opinion about something. The data under her fingers was beginning to take on a pattern of sorts, but she still didn’t have it quite pinned down. Too many things still didn’t make sense.
“Did you ever happen to see anything at all that might be Ancient while you were on Londinium?” Sam asked Vala.
Vala had gone quiet a long time ago, now lying on her back on the futon they’d dragged back to the other side of the room for her. She lifted one hand in the air as if studying her fingernails. “Not that I recall,” she said, “but I wasn’t really looking for it either.”
Yeah, Sam thought. From what Vala had told them, she and Daniel had had a lot more on their minds than the various quirks of this galaxy. “So the first time you saw anything Ancient was on Metis.”
Vala’s arm dropped back down. “Yes.”
Sam frowned, biting on the end of her pen. She could feel Jack shift next to her.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“I’m wondering why Mal and his crew had never seen anything like the security system on Shanxi before. From what I gather, they have more than enough experience with the Alliance to know their systems backwards and forwards.”
“Because it wasn’t Alliance?” Jack guessed.
It made a strange sort of sense. The special systems, Daniel and Vala’s mysterious removal from an Alliance facility in the middle of the night. “And if Shanxi is as much of a backwater as Mal made it sound, why is there such a sophisticated system in place?”
“There’s something there,” Jack surmises.
Sam nodded. “I think it probably wasn’t an accident that Vala was being held there too.”
“So you’re thinking that Shanxi is being controlled by the same people as Metis. The people holding Daniel.”
“It’s possible,” Sam said. She looked over at Jack. “Which means, in all possibility, the people Mal just stole from were not the Alliance, but Daniel’s captors.”
He slid her a look. “You’re saying we need to know what Mal took.”
“Yeah. I think so.”
Jack sighed. “Of course we do.”
It was almost five full hours before Mal returned, leading them all out into the small living space next to the infirmary. Sam sank down on the couch next to Jack, Vala remaining back by the door, as if doing her best to be a fly on the wall.
“I hope you’ve given a bit more thought to being cooperative,” Mal said, Zoe standing silently next to him. He turned to look at Vala. “You can start by telling us who you are.”
“She’s with us,” Jack said before Vala could answer. “That’s really all you need to know.”
“Your friend got a tongue?” Mal asked.
Vala smiled, her entire demeanor shifting, so much so that Sam had the feeling she was looking at an entirely new person. Vala tossed an appraising glance in Jayne’s direction where he hulked in the background. “Sure do, handsome. And I know how to use it too.”
Jayne brightened measurably, the arm crossed protectively over his monster of a gun flexing.
Apparently Daniel’s descriptions of Vala had not been exaggerated even a tiny bit.
Mal looked surprised and not a little smug at this unexpected outburst. “Funny,” he drawled, “Never thought such upstanding citizens as yourselves would have friends in such fine places as a prison.”
Shit. Sam knew that crack about criminals and low lifes was going to come back and bite her in the ass. “Look,” she said, deciding sticking as close to the truth as possible might be the best tactic. “I didn’t know Vala was there until I saw the feed on Shanxi. I couldn’t just leave her.”
“I believe I remember making it very clear what would happen if you did anything to endanger this crew.”
“And I didn’t,” Sam said. “We got away clean.” She deliberately didn’t look at Vala, who was the only one who probably understood just how graceless their exit really had been.
Mal took a step toward Sam. “If’n you don’t count the Alliance cruiser that almost nabbed us in orbit!”
Sam shared a glance with Jack. “Are you sure they were Alliance?” she asked.
Mal dragged a hand over his face, a gesture of raw frustration with the direction this conversation was going, no doubt. “I think I can be trusted to know what an Alliance scout blasting across my gorram prow looks like!”
“Of course,” Sam said, leaning back against the couch, her hands held up in a belated attempt to appease the man currently deciding their fate.
Mal, for his part, looked like he was beginning to get one hell of a headache. “Put them back in the room,” he said wearily, waving Jayne forward.
“Mal,” Sam called out to forestall his departure. “I need to know what you took from Shanxi.”
Mal looked heavenward for a moment, mumbling something under his breath. “Just why in the hell would I tell you that?”
Sam didn’t really have an answer for that, darting a glance at Jack, who just shook his head.
“I know you don’t have any reason to trust us,” Sam said. “I just…I think there’s a lot more going on here than it seems. You should be careful.”
For a second it looked like Mal was going to brush her off with yet another sharp retort, but instead he just shook his head. “Look,” he said, sounding tired. “We finish up this job, do the drop, and then we’ll let you off at the next nearest port, no harm done. Okay?”
It was probably the best they could hope for, all things considered.
“Okay,” Sam agreed, watching Mal disappear back up towards the bridge.
She just had a bad feeling it wouldn’t be that easy.
+++
They’ve just entered the outer edge of the Kalidasa system, a short jot out from Aberdeen when Serenity swooped to a stop with all the grace of having dropped the engine some space back. Mal looked down at the controls in his hands in confusion, already reaching for the comm to holler at Kaylee when he realized his control had been preempted by the other station.
Mal looked over to see River in the secondary seat, something she was wont to do from time to time. She had one bare foot up on the edge of her chair, her fingers tight around the controls.
“Sir?” Zoe asked, appearing up on deck, no doubt also wondering about their sudden stop. She followed Mal’s gaze to River.
“This is wrong. It’s all wrong,” River said, lifting up to press her fingers against the glass. “Greedy hands and hungry eyes-only hid from sight.”
Mal couldn’t pretend to understand half of what came out of River’s mouth at any given time, but he knew that tone, the pose of her body, the way she looked like she’d love to fold back inside herself if such a thing were possible. He knew enough to take caution when she offered it.
Mal looked at Zoe. “Let’s contact Miles just to make sure everything is as it should be.”
Zoe nodded her agreement, crossing over to the controls. A few moments later, the broad, homely face of their contact filled the small screen.
“Hey, Miles,” Mal greeted him, noticing the rather fine weave of his shirt that said he’d been moving up in the worlds these days. “We’re a few hours out. Just wanted to let you know everything is still on schedule.”
On the other side of the deck, River started a low crooning sound under her breath, shaking her head back and forth.
“Great to hear,” Miles said congenially, his face pressed right up close to the screen. “Meet at the usual spot, eh?”
“Sure thing,” Mal said. “That sister of yours gonna be around?”
Miles’ easy-going expression broke for a moment, something of rage building in the crease between his eyes before it wiped clean. “Ah, Mal,” he said, his voice chillingly satisfied right under the forced pleasantness. “You always were one to go looking for trouble.”
Mal smirked. “What can I say, sometimes trouble just finds me irresistible.”
Miles’ smile only widened, any more unpleasant emotions only betrayed by the slight tic in his jaw.
“See you in a few hours,” Mal said, the smile slipping off his face the moment the comm went dark.
“He’s setting us up,” Zoe commented.
Mal nodded, dragging a hand over his face. Miles had a notorious temper and a not-so-forgotten past with Mal. He should have blown up at Mal, told him to take the product and shove it up his ass, anything other than calm pleasantries. Miles clearly wanted the deal to go down, was itching for it.
There was no way they could go in for the drop now.
The one annoyance in the whole thing that lingered was that Miles was a browncoat. He may have a temper like a son of a bitch, and the manners of a mud farmer, but nothing in God’s great ‘verse would make Miles cooperate with the Alliance. Nothing.
‘Are you sure they were Alliance?’ Sam’s helpful voice asked once again in his mind.
“Lao tyen yeh,” he muttered, “xianzai wo pai.”
“Not sure that will help, sir,” Zoe said.
A hot product and no one to load it off on. Alliance a few steps behind, a new player two steps ahead. And three strangers on his boat. It was enough to make his neck itch.
“What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?” he asked.
Zoe shifted next to him, her voice dropping an octave. “I think I know just who to ask.”
Mal supposed he should just be thankful she hadn’t said ‘I told you so.’ He really had to stop picking up strays; it just never ended well.
He felt the ship hum back to life beneath him, glancing over to find River looking to him, a question in her eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “Get us out of here.”
Anywhere but here.
Under her guidance, Serenity slipped back out into the black, smooth and graceful in a way that was unique only to those two. River lacked the inventiveness and daredevil speed of Wash, but she had a way with Serenity, not so much commanding her as simply letting the ship have her head. He could feel it, the way Serenity was different under her hands.
He turned to Zoe. “Let’s go talk to our guests.”
Mal had this whole plan about how he was gonna approach Jack and Sam, how he would work his way carefully around to the problem at hand without revealing too much because the last thing he needed was for them to have the upper hand.
Then he opened the door, saw them sitting there with their prisoner friend and just blurted, “Would someone care to tell me just what the wuh de ma is going on?”
So much for that plan.
Sam pushed to her feet. “What’s happened?”
“The gorram buy is a trap.”
Sam and Jack shared a glance. Mal did not like the way they looked completely unsurprised.
“I’m gettin’ real tired of this damn game. We all know you ain’t homesteaders. So if you know what the hell is happening, now if the time to tell me.”
Sam nodded. "It’s a long story. But if you show me what you took, maybe I can tell you what you’ve gotten yourself into." All of her bluster was gone now, just a weary sort of acceptance in its place and for some reason that put him at more ease than anything else this day had.
Or it could just be they both knew that he was hell and gone out of options.
He nodded at Zoe. “Bring it up to the mess.”
It took both Zoe and Jayne to heave the crate up on the table. Kaylee and Simon wandered in right behind, and now there were eight of them huddled around the table together staring at it. Not looking inside had been one of the stipulations Miles had passed on to them, giving them only a lot number. Just more reason to take a look.
“What’s going on, Cap’n?” Kaylee asked.
“Hopefully we’re about to find out,” he said, grabbing a crow bar and levering up the lid on the crate. The wood gave away with a loud groan, falling flat on all sides so that the lump of straw spilled out over the table. Something large and dirt-colored was visible here and there. He reached out to knock the straw clear when Sam grabbed for his arm.
“Wait,” she said, something in her voice automatically making him comply. “Let’s be careful with this until we know what it is.”
Mal removed his hands, but refused to back away as Sam carefully began removing the straw while touching the thing as little as possible. When it was finally clear, she stepped back a moment, giving them all a clear view of the strange stone sculpture. It was about three feet wide and covered in characters Mal had never seen, set up with buttons like a rudimentary data station.
Sam finally reached out a hand and touched it like it was a holy thing or worse, a bomb. Vala and Jack stepped forward until all three of them were crowded around the thing.
“Is that what I think it is?” Jack asked.
Sam nodded.
“Ancient?” Vala asked.
“Yeah,” Sam confirmed, her fingers still sliding along the contraption’s edges.
Jack frowned, taking a deliberate step back that did nothing to calm Mal’s nerves. “What is it doing here?”
Sam shook her head. “I have no idea.”
“This can’t be coincidence,” Jack pointed out.
Mal had had enough. “What the hell are you people talking about?”
Jack looked up from the object just long enough to send Mal a sardonic glance. "Oh, it's safe to say you've bitten off way more than you can handle here, Reynolds."
Mal crossed his arms over his chest. “I think it’s about time you told us who you really are.”
"We're the ones who might actually be able to get you out of this mess," Jack said. "If you’re lucky."
Mal was beginning to get back in the mood for yelling when Sam finally jumped in.
“You’re right,” she said. “We’re not homesteaders.”
“Oh, really.”
Sam nodded. “We’re also not exactly from around here.”
“Where exactly are you from?”
She took a breath. “A planet called Earth.”
“You mean Earth that was?” Kaylee asked, confusion tingeing her voice.
Sam looked over at Jack and he shrugged. “No," she said. "Earth that is.”
Kaylee’s mouth dropped open.
“Earth ain’t been habitable in centuries,” Jayne pointed out.
“Our Earth is, last time I checked,” Jack said.
“Your Earth?”
“Look,” Sam said, leaning over the table. “We don’t know anything about the Earth from your mythology, whether it’s the same one, or even what your civilization is doing here. We just know that we came from a neighboring galaxy where there is also an Earth.”
“Oh,” Jayne said, “didn’t know there’d be bedtime stories. Let me go get my blankie.”
Sam ignored him, pointing at the strange contraption. “This is an advanced piece of technology made by a race of beings we call the Ancients. A similar piece of technology built by them accidentally transported Vala and another one of our friends to your galaxy. We came here to find them.”
Mal glanced at Vala just quick enough to see the look of surprise on her face, though he couldn’t be sure if that was a reaction to Sam’s honesty, or just being called friend. Catching him watching her, Vala’s expression seamlessly morphed into something coy and practiced.
“You’re talking about intergalactic travel,” Kaylee said, tearing Mal’s attention from Vala. “That would take lifetimes. Even moving between solar systems can take generations!”
Sam turned to Kaylee, her face softening and eyes lighting up with something that seemed to completely transform her face. “We had a ship equipped with a hyperdrive.”
Kaylee plopped down into the seat next to Sam. “But that’s-you can’t,” she sputtered, looking like she was getting a short circuit in her brain. She reached for Sam’s arm, her eyes wide as they leaned into each other like girls sharing gossip. “How far did you come? How long did it take?”
Sam smiled. “From the edge of our galaxy to the edge of yours is about 4.2 million light-years. It took us four weeks to cross.”
Kaylee’s mouth gaped a moment before she sat up real straight. “Can I see it?”
“What?”
“Your ship!”
Jack let out a huff. “You’ll have to ask the Alliance. They were kind enough to take it off our hands a while back.”
“If they even still have it,” Sam said. “I imagine our new friends could have found a way to get their hands on it.”
“Hold on,” Mal said, waving his hands in the air. “Are we really accepting that these three came from another galaxy?”
Kaylee shrugged one shoulder. “People have been hypothesizing ‘bout hyperdrives for ages ‘n ages. Never got it to work, but that don’t mean it’s impossible.”
Sam turned back to Mal. “If you think we’re lying, just ask River.”
Mal didn’t need to do that though, because despite the insanity of their story, things were finally beginning to make sense. A twisted, headachy sort of sense, but sense nonetheless.
“Say I believe you. What does any of this have to do with us?”
“Because this artifact tells me that the people holding our friend prisoner are the same ones you just stole from.”
“They’re gonna want their stuff back,” Jack helpfully supplied, like Mal really needed the reminder that he’d just earned Serenity yet another enemy.
“They know who you are, wouldn’t you at least like to return the favor?” Sam asked.
Mal crossed his arms over his chest. “What are you suggesting?”
“That for the moment our interests lie in the same place.”
Wonderful. And just when he’d grown so fond of the idea of dumping them off at the first backwater hellhole he could find.
“Help us rescue our friend, and in exchange we will help you figure out exactly what you’ve gotten yourselves into.”
"And in exchange for risking my crew?"
Sam didn’t seem to have a ready answer for that, apparently scrambling for something until her eyes came to rest on the alien device. She reached out and tapped it. "How about I teach you how to use this?"
Mal glanced down at the strange object. "That depends. What is it?"
Sam smiled. "Jack, would you mind?" she asked, canting her head towards the object.
He slid her a glance, a question there, but she just shrugged as if asking he if had a better idea. Reluctantly, Jack reached out and touched the device. Almost immediately the damn thing lit up, strange letters and shapes floating above it. Jayne jumped back from the table, Kaylee just staring up at it in awed fascination.
Mal's eyes darted to Sam's in alarm, but she was intently inspecting the device, poking at various buttons with her bottom lip between her teeth as if trying to remember an old school lesson.
“I think that should--,” Sam started to say.
And then, to Mal’s astonishment, Sam and Jack disappeared. No poof or slight of hand, they were just gone, the machine still happily humming along.
"What the hell!" Jayne exclaimed, waving his rifle trough the space Sam had inhabited only moments before. "Where'd they go?"
Vala, for her part, didn’t look so much alarmed as covetous, leaning in to take a much closer look at the contraption on the table.
A moment later, the machine turned off, Jack reappearing in his chair, only with Sam nowhere to be seen.
Someone tapped on Mal’s shoulder, nearly making him jump out of his skin. He spun on his heel to find Sam standing behind him.
"So," she said, canting her head to one side. "Do we have a deal?"
Damn right they did.
+++
Simon poked gently at the pink skin beginning to knit together under the dark stain of careful sutures across Jack’s torso. All things considered, the wound was healing better than Simon could have hoped. Jack seemed to have bounced back from blood loss quicker than he would expect from a man half his age.
“You done yet, doc?” Jack demanded, his voice surly. Simon didn’t take it personally; he’d seen enough people deal badly with being a patient to understand that it was the loss of control that ate at Jack, not the doctor per se.
“These sutures aren’t quite ready to come out,” Simon commented, carefully replacing the bandage with a fresh one. The surrounding skin was cool under his fingers, with no signs of blotchiness. “But I’m still not seeing any signs of infection, so that’s good news.”
Jack sighed. “They itch,” he complained. “Can’t you just take them out?”
“No, and neither can you,” Simon said, his voice firm. Something told him Jack was exactly the sort of disgruntled patient to snip out his own stitches when no one was watching.
Movement outside the infirmary caught Simon’s attention. Just River’s eyes could be seen over the edge of the window, peering in on them as if a curious child at a zoo.
“Doc?” Jack asked, turning to look in the same direction as Simon.
River’s head dropped out of sight.
“I think she’s scared of you,” Simon commented, keeping his voice low and even. People weren’t River’s specialty, especially strangers, but the way she’d been skulking around the ship since Jack and Sam appeared, something about it just struck Simon as strange, like she was half-fascinated and half-panicked. When he asked her about it, the most he could ever get out of her was that Jack “sounded different,” whatever that meant.
It was easy to imagine something very dark festering in this man, his body spoke volumes about a rough life.
Jack met his gaze head on and Simon had the feeling his brotherly concern was pretty transparent. His tone, when he spoke, lacked all of the previous surliness, instead soft and earnest. “She doesn’t have any reason to be.” His lips twisted then, into a smile that managed to be wry and self-depreciating. “Though I can’t vouch for what insanity might be hiding up in this old rock of mine.”
Simon didn’t get a chance to respond to that, as Mal and Sam came in then, mid-argument about something or other as usual.
Mal seemed to be chasing after Sam, his voice overly loud. “Metis ain’t a place you just sidle up to and knock on the door!”
“I understand that,” Sam said, the enormous stress she was under clear in her voice. Simon’s practiced eye took in the various signals that she wasn’t spending much time sleeping lately, let alone getting proper nutrition. “Vala knows the place, can direct us.”
“Excuse me if I don’t find that the comfort it should be. I usually find random strangers picked up from prison so trustworthy.”
“Simon,” Sam said, giving him a strained smile and pointedly turning her back on Mal as she came up to stand next to Jack. “How is our patient today?”
“He’s fine,” Jack insisted, sounding disgruntled. “And sitting right here.”
Sam ignored that, turning to Simon for confirmation.
“Right, Doc?” Jack said, clearly willing Simon to be on his side.
Simon refused to get in the middle of that tug of war, taking a moment to finish off the bandage. Pulling off his gloves, he said, “Well, now that he’s gone a few solid days without ripping his stitches out, we are on a much better road to recovery.”
“See?” Jack said. “I’ll be right as rain by the time we reach Metis.”
“That’s not what I-,” Simon began to say, only to be interrupted by Mal.
“Best not to risk it,” he said. “Jack’s injury was serious after all. He’ll be much safer onboard.”
Mal and Sam stared across the bed at each other, and Simon didn’t think he imagined the way the tension ratcheted up in the room. There was some sort of tug of war or silent battle of wills going on that Simon wasn’t sure he understood the nuance of. Certainly this was more than Mal showing concern for Jack’s health.
“Jack stays here,” Mal reiterated in that ‘don’t mistake this for anything other than an order’ tone of his that Simon knew only too well. It occurred to him then that keeping Jack on board was a ploy to make sure Sam stuck to plan, an insurance policy of sorts. No more surprises. Mal always did hate surprises.
The staring contest continued another beat. Sam was the first to look away.
“The hell I will,” Jack snapped, probably understandably annoyed at being discussed like he was a piece of meat. He yanked his shirt down and hopped off the bed without any regard for his wound and Simon tried not to wince at the careless movement. On the road to healing was not the same thing as healed.
“Jack,” Sam said, one hand lifting to her forehead like she was suffering sinus pressure.
“If you think I am letting you go out on a job alone with these people again…”
And that was it. Simon could practically see her temper snapping. “Excuse us,” she said, pulling Jack’s arm hard enough that he had no option other than to follow her out of the room.
Simon glanced at Mal, but he just shrugged and unabashedly strolled up to lean against the doorframe to get a better view of the unfolding drama.
Sam had pulled Jack as far away from the infirmary as they could get. With their heads now close together, Sam was speaking insistently, only to have Jack bark something that made her wince, her back straightening as if coming to a reluctant sort of attention. Recovering, she shook her head, emphasizing whatever she was saying with a swift jab of her finger to Jack’s chest.
All of which only served to make Jack even more than irate, and Simon tensed for some sort of epic explosion of temper. There was an explosion all right, just not exactly the sort he was expecting.
Jack reached for her, dragging her up against him, and Simon took a step as if to intervene but rather than shaking some sense into her, or harming her in any way, Jack simply kissed her. Not that it was a simple kiss by any means, but a hard one as if he was imprinting her in his mind.
Just when Simon was beginning to think it was long past time to stop spying, Jack broke the kiss. With his head still resting against hers, he lifted one hand to her cheek as he said something so softly that not even the tiniest rumble of sound made it to where Simon and Mal stood.
Sam’s body seemed to bow into his as she touched his hand on her cheek, her fingers squeezing around his as she nodded firmly, like making a pledge.
Still looking grim, but appeased, Jack pulled his hand back and stepped around her, disappearing back into the guest quarters. Sam stood there a moment longer against the wall, like she’d had all the wind taken out of her sails, one hand pressed to her lips.
Then she turned and saw Mal and Simon watching her, her expression shifting to hard and guarded once more. Simon felt his cheeks burn with guilt for intruding on something that was obviously private. Then again, in a place like Serenity, there wasn’t much privacy to be found. For anyone.
Sam approached, coming to a stop next to Mal. “He stays,” she confirmed.
Mal nodded. “Then I’d say we’ve got ourselves a deal.” With that, he pushed off the doorjamb and headed back up towards the bridge.
Sam watched him go, her hand once again massaging at her forehead.
“Headache?” Simon asked, ushering her back into the infirmary. “The Captain tends to have that effect on people.”
Sam let out a soft huff of amusement. “I bet.”
Simon pulled open a cabinet. “Let me give you something for the headache.”
“No, it’s fine.”
“Maybe something to help you sleep?”
She looked up at him in surprise, as if wondering how he could know she wasn’t sleeping.
Simon gestured at himself. “Doctor, remember?”
She gave him a brittle smile. “I can’t afford any weird side effects right now,” she said. “We still have no idea how much our physiology differs from your own.”
Simon conceded the point, not particularly interested in having someone else try to kill him in a drugged fit. Something told him Sam could be just as dangerous as Jack when she needed to be, even if it was hard to imagine looking at her now.
“You’re going to have a hard time looking out for everyone if you don’t take care of yourself,” Simon observed.
“Thanks for the concern, Simon,” she said in a way he knew meant she had no intention of taking his advice. She gestured over her shoulder. “I’ve got a lot of work to do before we reach Metis.”
“Of course,” Simon said.
River appeared in the doorway then, her eyes following Sam as she departed. “She don’t know how to bend.”
Simon nodded. “Maybe she should learn.”
River’s head tilted to the side, her hand slipping into his. “She will. Everyone does.”
That was what he was afraid of.
:: next::