Firefly--Life Signs Read online

  Together, these operations dumped every erg of power in Serenity to the engine. Lights dimmed throughout the ship as the engine roared into life, going from stationary to flat-out in a split second.

  This was the significance of Wash’s hand signal, which Kaylee had correctly interpreted. Serenity’s burn rate was graded in quarter increments. By moving his fingers in an explosive pattern four times, Wash had been indicating “four quarters output” or, to put it another way, full burn. Both he and Kaylee knew the only way to achieve that from a standing start was complete power redistribution from all the ship’s systems, and the only way to do that was by overriding the engine inputs and rerouting the flow manually.

  The intense power surge put an enormous strain not just on the engine but also on the ship herself. Serenity’s frame shuddered horrendously, as though she was suffering convulsions. It was possible—not likely but possible—that she might even shake herself apart. At the very least the sheer amount of torque being exerted on the engine could tear the trace compression block free from its mountings, with devastating consequences.

  None of the three crewmembers was ignorant of the risk they were taking. Wash and Kaylee knew Serenity inside out and had a clear understanding of what she was and was not capable of. River, in turn, was attuned to their thoughts; in a way, she knew the two of them inside out.

  They just couldn’t afford to be waylaid by the Feds, however. Commander Victoria Levine seemed fairly certain their captain was no longer aboard, and if she didn’t know for sure, she would once she had had her junior officers search the ship from stem to stern. Whether or not she understood why “Captain Malcolm” had elected to remain on Atata, she would arrest the three crewmembers. She would also impound Serenity, or else just destroy her.

  It was one of those fight-or-flight situations, and seeing as Serenity lacked ordnance of any kind, the fight option was out and all that remained was flight.

  Wash felt Serenity buck and heave beneath him. The steering yoke juddered in his grasp. It was all he could do to keep ahold of it. Serenity was responding, however. Grudgingly, perhaps, and with plenty of groaning and bellyaching, but nevertheless this beautiful, battered, brave old ship was giving her all, accelerating to flank speed in a fraction of the time it ought to take. She was going to get them out of there, too fast for IAV Constant Vigilance to follow.

  Or so Wash hoped.

  First, though, he had to outmaneuver the corvette.

  Instead of doing a one-eighty and turning tail, Wash flew straight at Constant Vigilance. At the very last instant, mere meters from impact, he heeled Serenity over on her longitudinal axis. She careered past the Alliance vessel, so close her underside practically brushed the corvette’s starboard thruster array.

  It was the last thing Commander Levine would have been expecting, and Wash was counting on her being too startled to react right away. That crucial few seconds of delay might be enough to buy them their freedom. Constant Vigilance could give chase, but by the time it had come about and attained maximum speed, Serenity would have opened up too large a lead to be caught.

  Still shuddering, still straining, her tail end blazing like a comet, Serenity rapidly put distance between herself and Constant Vigilance. Wash allowed himself a small whoop of triumph. They were going to make it. In just a few more seconds they were going to be out of range of the corvette’s weapons.

  There was going to be hell to pay for this little stunt, he knew. Several of Serenity’s parts were likely going to get burned out by the power surge, and Kaylee would be repairing the damage for hours if not days afterwards.

  But as long as they got away and were able to return later to collect the landing party, he would count it as a win.

  “Eat my dust, Feds!” he chortled.

  Then a large red light on his console started flashing. It was accompanied by, of all things, the sound of a duck quacking.

  “Oh no,” Wash breathed. “Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Wŏ de mā hé tā de fēng kuáng de wài shēng, please tell me this isn’t happening.”

  The red light was a fitted-as-standard console fixture. The duck quacking was a recent customization Wash had made himself. He’d thought it amusing at the time, a zany sound effect to lighten a tense moment. Now that that moment had arrived, however, the quacking just seemed ridiculous and inappropriate.

  What these two indicators—visual and aural—signified was that Constant Vigilance’s weapons lock on Serenity had gone from passive to active.

  The Alliance vessel had opened fire.

  Wash checked the rear proximity sensor readout.

  Missiles.

  Three of them.

  Closing in fast, in tight formation.

  Wash was not very religious. He prayed sometimes, not often, and usually only in situations like this, when his ass was on the line.

  He prayed now, harder than he had ever prayed before. He prayed that Constant Vigilance’s targeting solution was incorrect. That one or more of the missiles might be a dud. That all of them would run out of fuel before they reached Serenity.

  But prayer did not always solve everything. Sometimes you had to take matters into your own hands.

  Wash threw Serenity into a series of tight barrel rolls. She spun, leaving a corkscrewing trail of phosphorescence in her wake.

  As the missiles homed in, their onboard computers strove to adapt to their target’s abnormal behavior. The software made countless minute course corrections. The missiles’ flightpaths shifted and shifted again, until all at once, perhaps inevitably, the tailfin of one touched the tailfin of another.

  Instantaneously the two projectiles whirled out of control, colliding with each other. A huge, silent burst of fire, and they were gone.

  That left the third missile, still relentlessly pursuing Serenity.

  The rear proximity sensor readout informed Wash that two of the missiles were down. It also registered that the third was gaining ground with each passing second. Barrel-rolling wasn’t going to help any, not now. A lone missile couldn’t exactly collide with itself, could it?

  He leveled Serenity out. There was one other trick he could try. He just had to get the timing exactly right.

  Not yet.

  Not yet.

  Now!

  Hauling back on the yoke, Wash put the ship into an Immelmann turn. Serenity veered up and round until she was heading back the way she had come, inverted. Wash flipped her over. Now she was making straight for Constant Vigilance.

  The tenacious missile followed the same trajectory. It was a couple of hundred yards from Serenity’s aft, dangerously close, but also just where Wash wanted it.

  Serenity and Constant Vigilance zoomed towards each other at a combined speed of 2,000 miles per hour, give or take a hundred. The gap between them narrowed precipitously. Within a matter of seconds, one ship would be almost on top of the other.

  Wash knew Commander Levine had no choice. It was too late for evasive maneuvers. Serenity had brought with her the missile like a dog on a leash, and it was about to hit. At this rate, the missile would blow up Serenity when she was directly adjacent to Constant Vigilance. The corvette would get caught in the blast, and the collateral damage would be extensive, potentially catastrophic. Levine had to abort the missile.

  Essentially, Wash was wagering his, Kaylee’s and River’s lives against Levine’s sense of self-preservation.

  “Do it,” he said through gritted teeth, as if addressing Levine. “Do it.”

  In the event, Commander Levine did something else.

  19

  Twenty seconds earlier

  “Sir,” said Constant Vigilance’s lieutenant commander, “that qīng wā cāo de liú máng has about-turned and is coming straight at us.”

  “I can see that, XO,” replied Commander Levine, “and there’s no call for profanity. I will not abide foul language on my ship.”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

  “Sir, what should we do?” asked the weapo
ns officer.

  There was precious little time to decide. Levine understood fully what Jed Race was attempting. It was sheer lunacy. It was bold as hell. Tranquility’s pilot was clearly gutsier than he looked, not to mention trickier.

  “Should we abort missile, sir?” the weapons officer prompted.

  “No,” said Levine. “Detonate prematurely.”

  The weapons officer, knowing better than to question orders, entered the detonation command on his console.

  The missile exploded a dozen yards behind the Firefly, while the Firefly itself was virtually the same distance from Constant Vigilance.

  The blast wave propelled the Firefly forward. She hurtled round and round, careering into Constant Vigilance belly-first and rebounding.

  The impact boomed through the Alliance ship like some sort of apocalyptic gong. Everyone aboard was hurled sideways.

  As Levine picked herself up off the floor of the bridge, she demanded a status report. Alarms were wailing. Every console screen she could see was flashing a warning or caution of some kind.

  “No hull breach, sir.”

  “Thrusters one and two have taken a pounding, sir. Both are down.”

  “Engine room reports fuel core leak, sir.”

  The viewing ports showed that, outside, space was spinning. Constant Vigilance had been sent into a spiral by the collision.

  “Do we have power to correct our rotation?” Levine asked.

  “Afraid not, sir. Controls are temporarily offline. System is rebooting.”

  “As soon as they’re back up, straighten us out.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  Levine had known it would be a close call, detonating the missile when the Firefly was so near Constant Vigilance. She had been hoping at least to cripple the other ship. In the event, through what she considered to be sheer bad luck, the Firefly had crippled hers, albeit temporarily.

  It had undoubtedly paid a price for that, however. Tranquility could not have emerged from the clash of the two ships unscathed. It was the smaller of the two vessels, and the less well-armored.

  In fact—a consoling thought for Levine—although things might be bad for Constant Vigilance, they were surely much, much worse for the people aboard Tranquility.

  20

  The thing about Serenity was, she was old, yes. She was beaten-up, yes. And yes, she had about eighty million space miles on the clock, well above average for a ship of her class.

  But she was also built to last.

  She skimmed Constant Vigilance more than struck, taking the brunt of the blow on her underside, her best-reinforced section. She now had several fresh dents and scrapes to add to her collection, but remained fundamentally intact.

  She bounced away from the collision, cartwheeling end over end.

  Inside, the artificial gravity held, but still everything was chaos. As Kaylee and River staggered to their feet in the engine room, circuits around them were blowing, showers of sparks were flying, and the engine itself was making some very unhappy grinding and shrieking noises.

  “Tī wŏ de pi gŭ,” Kaylee gasped. “What the heck just happened? Did something just hit us?”

  “We just hit something,” said River.

  Dazedly, Kaylee took stock of the state of the engine room. A number of small fires had started. They were the most urgent problem, and she grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall and attended to them.

  Out of the corner of her eye she noticed River heading for the door.

  “River, a little help here! I need you to disengage the transmission vector connection and harness the ancillary drive. I’ll talk you through it.”

  “Can’t,” River said. “Wash.”

  “What about Wash?”

  “He’s hurt.”

  Kaylee didn’t ask how River knew. She just said, “Okay. Go see to him,” and carried on directing a stream of carbon dioxide from the fire extinguisher’s nozzle at the various blazes, which were proliferating. Once they were out, she could turn her attention to the engine. It was in serious danger of overheating, and by disengaging the transmission vector connection and harnessing the ancillary drive she could give it a chance to cool down and recover.

  Wash was hurt.

  She hoped with all her heart that it wasn’t too serious. As well as being an incomparable pilot, Wash was the kindest, gentlest person on the ship. If he was badly injured…

  Or worse…

  Kaylee bit her lip and focused on the matter at hand.

  21

  River hurried through the ship, skipping over dislodged items on the floor—crates, bits of furniture, tools—and ducking under lengths of duct and cable that had broken loose from their mountings.

  In the bridge, Wash sat slumped in the pilot’s chair, arms dangling. Blood poured from a gash in his forehead, covering half his face. Next to him lay a section of cladding, one edge of it also bloodied. The piece of heavy steel had clearly fallen from the ceiling, straight onto him.

  River checked his carotid and found a pulse. It was thready and irregular, but it was there. Wash was alive but unconscious, out for the count.

  And Serenity needed someone to fly her.

  River could see IAV Constant Vigilance out there. As Serenity twirled through space, the Alliance vessel appeared in the forward viewing ports at regular intervals, sweeping into and out of sight. It was in a spin too, and was getting further and further away. River noted damage to a couple of its thrusters and also the little expulsions of glowing plasma from its emergency vents that spoke of a fuel leak. For now, Constant Vigilance was dead in the water. But for how long?

  Hornet-class corvette. Standard engine reboot cycle under ideal conditions: two minutes. Add another eight or so for isolating the leaking fuel cell and diverting power away from the damaged thrusters.

  That meant Serenity had a window of ten minutes in which to make a clean getaway, moving beyond Constant Vigilance’s scanner range.

  Taking hold of Wash by the shoulders, River hauled him out of the chair. She might be slight of stature but she was strong and she knew how to use her muscles in order to distribute a load evenly and efficiently across her entire body. Recruit the abdominals. Lift with the legs. She lowered the dead weight of him to the floor, then knelt and tore a strip of fabric off his shirt. She wrapped this tightly around his head, creating a pineapple-patterned bandage. It wouldn’t stop the bleeding—blood flows freely from head wounds—but it would slow it down.

  Then, hopping into the pilot’s chair, River performed a swift analysis of the controls.

  To look at her, you might have thought she resembled a bird, the way her head darted this way and that, her eyes alighting on the screens, buttons and switches one after another. Nothing on any of the consoles was strange to her. She had watched Wash fly the ship countless times, taking in everything he did and storing it in her memory. Now, she was simply refamiliarizing herself. River’s brain was like an infinite warehouse. It could hold pretty much everything that was put into it, and she could retrieve the information at will. There were some things in there she couldn’t even remember learning. There were also some things that, try as she might, she couldn’t forget.

  For the time being, Serenity still had enough juice left to get them clear of the area. Ignoring the warning messages that glared on every screen in front of her, River goosed both of the main thrusters. By angling them and calibrating their output carefully, she managed to retard the ship’s spin. Serenity stabilized, her long series of somersaults at an end.

  River hit the intercom switch. “This is Pilot River at the helm,” she said, affecting an authoritative baritone drawl like that of a spaceliner captain. “I have the ship and I’m getting us the heck out of Dodge. Copy.”

  A moment later, Kaylee’s voice came from the speaker. “River, we can’t fly yet. We need to shut down the engine awhile first.”

  “That’s a big negative, Engineer Kaylee. We have one shot at escaping and we’ve got to take it. Ca
n you maintain power while we do? Copy.”

  “I can,” came the hesitant reply. “Serenity won’t like it, but I can.”

  “Then kindly oblige.”

  “Okay. River, what’s happened to Wash? How is he?”

  “Pilot Wash is temporarily out of action.”

  “But he’s gonna be all right?”

  “That’s an affirmative.”

  “Thank God. And—hate to ask—but are you sure you can fly the ship?”

  “Sure as shootin’, li’l lady.”

  River broke the intercom connection and closed her fingers around the steering yoke’s twin handles.

  “You and me again, Serenity,” she said, resuming her usual voice. Her tone was soft, almost loving. “I’m not on you. I am in you. I am you. River’s gone.”

  She tapped the throttle.

  “Let’s fly.”

  22

  All things considered, it could have been worse.

  A lot worse.

  You couldn’t forget that Correctional Unit #23 was a prison block. There were rows of cells, each with bars and a sliding door. They occupied two balconied tiers that surrounded a central hall and were connected to one another by skeletal metal stairs and walkways. All this was unquestionably prison-like, as was the fact that every item of furniture, from bunks to tables, was bolted down. The lighting was harsh, too, most of it shed by recessed fluorescents which seemed designed to leave no corner in shadow, although some additional, gentler illumination came from a large pyramidal skylight through which the last fading glow of the day filtered down.

  In short, you would never mistake the place for a health spa, say, or a five-star hotel.

  It was warm inside, however. Relatively, at least. Outdoors it must have been ten degrees below. In here, it was perhaps a smidgeon above zero. Positively tropical.

  It was quite peaceful, too. There was the background clatter and clamor of five hundred people going about their business in an enclosed space, the occasional shout, the odd guffaw, the shuffle of footfalls; but nobody was arguing and nobody was berating or threatening anybody. The aggression levels were low to nonexistent. In fact, the atmosphere in CU #23 seemed subdued overall, as if people were nervous about stepping out of line even though there were no guards around to keep an eye on them and punish rule-breakers.