FicWad

-I-I-I-

When Mal walked into the cockpit, he found just about what he'd expected to see. Wash was bent over the controls, of course, using his considerable skills to bring the ship in safely, and Harry was curled up in the other chair, his astonishingly green eyes fixed on the pilot's hands.

"Not too much longer, Cap'n," Wash told him, keeping an eye on the hull temperature indicator.

Mal nodded, pleased. And why not? Things were going according to plan and he had a nice easy heist to look forward to. Provided, of course, that their usual luck didn't decide to make an appearance...

"It's screaming," he heard a quiet voice say, with those oddly accented words that always made Mal wonder just where in the 'verse the child had come from, since he had never before or since heard its like.

"What's screaming?" The ex-soldier asked, resting a hand on the boy's mess of dark curls.

Harry's eyes didn't even flicker from their intent, yet all-too-blank stare. Wash didn't pay him any attention, used to the audience after so many months. "It hurts. It can't take it anymore. It wants to give up." The near-murmuring stopped for a moment. "It's going to give up."

Mal felt a familiar wave of pity rise up through him. He knew both River and Harry had been abused by the Alliance, left with only bare threads of their sanity intact, but the damage done always seemed so much more apparent with the younger boy. "What's going to give up?" he asked again.

There was a nerve-shattering tearing noise from Serenity's bow, and Mal looked up just in time to see something fly past into the stratosphere. The head beneath his palm moved, and he automatically looked back down into eyes that for once almost looked sane.

"That."

Wash's eyes were wide, the pupils dilated. "Whoa! Did you see that?"

Serenity shuddered violently, even though Wash's hands were steady on the controls. Which meant...

Mal paled just the tiniest bit, though of course he would never have admitted it. Not without several drinks in him, anyway. "Was that the primary buffer panel?"

The pilot winced. "It did seem to resemble-"

Mal interrupted, anger roughening his voice. "Did the primary buffer panel just fall off my gorram ship for no apparent reason?" Again, Serenity moved in a fashion it definitely was not meant to, and Mal had to bend his knees to keep from falling over.

Wash winced again. "Looks like."

"I thought Kaylee checked our entry couplings," Mal muttered half to himself. "I have a very clear memory of it."

Wash's hands were no longer merely firm on the controls; his knuckles shone white. "Yeah, well, if she doesn't give us some extra flow from the engine room to offset the burn-through, this landing is gonna get pretty interesting."

Mal shook his head and, after a moment's thought, put his hands over Harry's ears. The boy took no notice. "Define interesting."

"'Oh God, oh God, we're all gonna die'?"

The captain growled, but Wash didn't even flinch. He released Harry, glad he'd thought to cover the boy's ears; it wasn't like Harry would have panicked at hearing of their impending doom- having gotten the nearly-catatonic kid to almost respond to what was actually going on around him marked this as a special day on the calendar already- but it made him feel just a bit better.

A step took Mal to the wall-mounted com. "This is the captain. There's a little problem with our entry sequence. We may experience slight turbulence and then... explode." He shut the com off and looked at his pilot. "Can you shave the vector-?"

"I'm doing it!" Wash snapped. "It's not enough."

Ordinarily, captains were the ultimate authority aboard ship. In practice, when they had a pilot as good as Wash on board, they learned to cut a little slack in the 'demanding respect' department. Mal scowled but said nothing.

Wash keyed the intercom built into the pilot's station with one hand, a maneuver that made Mal wince when it let go of the controls. "Kaylee!" he called out.

There wasn't anything more he could do on the bridge except distract the pilot, which would be a very bad idea, so Mal turned to leave. He briefly wondered if he should grab Harry and bring him along, but dismissed it; despite becoming a common fixture onboard /Serenity/, the kid had never once been underfoot. "Just get us on the ground!" he ordered over his shoulder.

Behind him, Wash grimaced. "That part'll happen, pretty definitely..."

When he reached the corridor running through the living quarters Jayne was just leaving his room. "We're gonna explode? I don't wanna explode!" the burly man protested.

Mal blinked at him, taking in the vast assortment of weaponry the mercenary had somehow managed to sling about his person. He was fairly sure he recognized at least half of his armory there. "Jayne, how many weapons you plan on bringing?" he asked, dumbfounded. "You only got the two arms."

Jayne would have shrugged if he hadn't been so heavily burdened. "I get excitable as to choice. Like to have my options open."

The captain frowned. "I don't plan on any shooting taking place during this job."

Jayne scowled. "Well, what you plan and what takes place ain't ever exactly been similar."

Mal held back a wince. That was too true to be at all comfortable. As he searched for something to say in reply, his eyes caught on a few certain items hanging on the other man's chest. "Jayne," he said slowly. "What did I say about grenades?"

Jayne's scowl grew. "Not to bring 'em out when the kid's around. Don't see him 'round here anywhere." He waved at the corridor, empty but for the two of them.

"Thought I said havin' them on board at all was a bad idea. Or do you want a repeat of that little incident?" They both winced. Personally, Mal would never forget the sight of Jayne frozen in terror in his bunk while a curious Harry twisted the timer back and forth on one of his grenades, muttering to himself all the while about making sure dinner didn't burn.

"No grenades," the captain ordered with a decisive nod.

"Are we crashing again?" a cool voice asked from behind them, and they turned to see Zoë standing there.

Mal sighed. "Talk to your husband. Is the mule prepared?"

"Good to go, sir. Just loading her up," his second-in-command replied.

Once less thing to worry about... Mal nodded and turned to go check on Kaylee. As he made his way to the engine room, he could hear the conversation behind him continue.

"Are those grenades?" Zoë asked, a critical eyebrow creeping upwards.

If it had been anyone but the mercenary, that would have been a pout on his lips. "Cap'n doesn't want 'em."

"We're robbing the place; we're not occupying it..."

Anything else was lost as the captain turned into the dining room. The ship shook again as he made his way through the room, and he took off at a run for the next corridor and the engine room attached to it. Inside, Serenity's gigantic engine rotated furiously above his head, and her mechanic was dashing back and forth with a happy smile on her face.

"Kaylee, what in the sphincter of hell are you playing at?" Mal demanded. "We got the primary buffer-"

"Everything's shiny, Cap'n," she interrupted, almost sounding pleased with the turn of events. "Not to fret."

Mal growled. "You told me-" Serenity bucked again, interrupting him a second time. "You told me the entry couplings would hold for another week!"

Kaylee didn't even look up at him as she replied. "That was six months ago, Cap'n."

He had to grit his teeth to keep from swearing. While personally satisfying, it wouldn't do them any good. "My ship don't crash," he finally bit out. "If she crashes, you crashed her."

The mechanic didn't look up from her work, which was probably a good thing, he reflected, as they'd most likely crash if she did. He turned to leave, only to come face to face with the last adult member of his crew.

"Doctor," Mal acknowledged, guiding him away from the engine room. With Kaylee's all-too-obvious crush on the young man, it just wasn't safe to have him in the same room with her when she needed to concentrate. "Guess I need to get innocked 'fore we hit planetside."

The ship rocked again. "Bit of a rockety ride. Nothing to worry about," he finished.

Simon Tam's expression didn't change from its accustomed blank mask. Sometimes Mal wondered if him and Harry were related after all, for all the expression the two of them showed added up together didn't even make up one normal person's catalogue. "I'm not worried."

"Fear is nothing to be ashamed of, Doc." Mal could never resist needling the other man.

"This isn't fear, this is anger," Simon rebuked, stopping in the middle of the corridor.

Mal didn't bother hiding his laughter. "Well, it's kinda hard to tell the one from the other, face like yours."

The doctor's lips might have tightened just a touch. "I imagine if it were fear, my eyes would be wider."

"I'll look for that next time." Mal tried to continue past Simon, but couldn't.

"You're not taking her."

Mal's jaw clenched, and this time when he tried to pass the doctor let him, having gotten to his point. "No, no, that's not a thing I'm interested in talking over with-"

"She's not going with you. That's /final/!"

The captain stopped dead. He might put up with a lot as the price for having some of the best people as crew, but that was more disrespect than he was ever going to take on board /his ship/! He spun. "I hear the words 'that's final' come out of your mouth ever again, they truly will be."

Simon didn't reply, seemingly taken aback by the sudden threat, and Mal turned back to his path. "This is my boat. Y'all are guests on it."

"Guests? I earn my passage, Captain."

That was true enough; with as often as Serenity's crew was injured somehow or another, having a trained- better than trained- medic on board was worth his weight in gold. When he brought two guests on board that were being hunted by the Alliance, though, the price was a hell of a lot higher. Mal wasn't a complete scoundrel. He was willing to take the kid on for free, not least because he'd gotten pretty fond of him, but River Tam was plenty old enough to make her own contribution to all of their welfares. "And it's time your little sister learned from your fine example," was all he said out loud.

The Doc didn't seem to get the message. "I've earned my passage treating bullet holes, knife wounds, laser burns..."

Mal shrugged. "Some of our jobs are trickier than others." They were walking past the guest quarters now.

"And you want to put my sister in the middle of that?"

"Didn't say 'want', said 'will.' It's one job, Doc. She'll be fine." They entered the infirmary. Mal leaned against the patient table as Simon prepared a hypo. "She's a reader. Sees into the truth of things. Might see trouble before it's coming, which is of use to me."

"And that's your guiding star, isn't it? What's of use?"

Another laugh came boiling up, but there was little humor in this one. "Honestly, Doctor, I think we may really crash this time anyway."

Mal suppressed a wince as the hypo was poked into his arm just a little harder than it needed to be. "Do you understand what I've gone through to keep River away from the Alliance? And Harry, too?" Simon said quietly.

If there was one thing Mal couldn't stand, it was folks who assumed their troubles were the worst ones in the whole 'verse. He challenged anyone who thought that way to go through even a day in Serenity Valley and come out singing the same tune. "I do, and it's a fact we here have been courteous enough to keep to our own selves."

Now Simon really did look afraid. "Are you threatening to-"

Mal cut him off. "I look out for me and mine. That don't include you 'less I conjure it does. Now you stuck a thorn in the Alliance's paw, and that tickles me a bit, but it also means I gotta step twice as fast to avoid them, and that means turning down plenty of jobs. Even honest ones." His business in the infirmary finished, he stepped out the door. If he's hoped to escape the Doc, though, he was disappointed as the man followed him out.

"Every year since the war, the Alliance pushes further out, fences off another piece of the 'verse," Mal continued, almost to himself. "Come a day there won't be room for naughty men like us to slip about at all. This job goes south, there well may not be another." Why the hell was he trying to justify himself? "So here is us, on the raggedy edge. Don't push me, and I won't push you, /dong le ma/?"

Simon didn't reply, which was a very good thing as Mal saw it. Any more arguing and he might have given in to the temptation to put a bullet into him. An unimportant part of him, that is. The Doc might be annoying as hell, but he knew his business like no one else Mal'd met.

Zoë and Jayne were loading up the new mule as he headed over to them. Along the way another quiver went through the deck, and Mal looked at his second-in-command. "Zoë, is Wash gonna straighten this boat out before we get flattened?"

Her lips curled up into a little smirk. "Like a downy feather, sir. Nobody flies like my mister."

As though on cue, everything seemed to get just a bit heavier, as deceleration pushed down on them. A moment later, there was a last, tiny shudder, one he barely felt through the soles of his boots as Serenity came to a nice, quiet halt.

Mal grinned and smacked the nearest intercom. "Not a bad landin' there, Wash."

"Told you we'd hit the ground, Mal."

And to think, getting to the planet was supposed to be the easy part of the gorram plan...