Mal stared out the windshield. The Reaver ship had stopped practically directly above them.
“What the hell are they playing at?” Zoe whispered.
“No idea,” Mal whispered back.
“Maybe they’re just playing with us,” River whispered.
Mal and Zoe just stared at her.
“You know, like a cat with a mouse?”
Mal glared daggers at River. “Okay, I’ll be quiet now,” she whispered.
Without warning, a giant cloud of detritus spewed out of the belly of the Reaver ship, headed directly for Serenity.
Mal cursed in Mandarin. “Brace yourselves!” he whispered over the intercom.
Then the cloud struck Serenity.
Kaylee heard a bare whisper over the intercom. “What?” she said.
She took a step toward the intercom, but never made it.
Serenity lurched down and to the right. Kaylee screamed as she lost her footing, tumbling across the deck.
Then Serenity pitched back, and Kaylee went flying through the air – right into the waiting arms of Chuck Bartowski.
“Got you!” he said, grabbing Kaylee and holding on as tightly as he could.
Then, just as suddenly as it had gone wild, Serenity became still again. With the lack of motion, Chuck suddenly realized the position he was in.
Here he was, with a rather pretty girl sitting in his lap, his arms around her waist, her chest brushing up against
his, her face just a few centimeters from his – and regions other than his mind were starting to notice.
He looked up, to see Kaylee looking directly into his eyes. Their eyes stayed locked for a few seconds, and Chuck realized he was about two seconds from being in an extremely awkward position if he didn’t get Kaylee off his lap.
“Uh… maybe… maybe you should check with Captain Reynolds to see what just happened?” he stammered, releasing his hold on Kaylee’s waist.
“Right… right, of course!” she said, as of coming out of a trance. Sliding off of Chuck’s lap (and just in time, too), she scurried over to the intercom. “Kaylee to Mal… what’s up?”
“Okay, they’re alright down there,” Mal said. “That’s good.”
He hit the intercom switch. “Turns out the Reavers were just stopping to dump some trash. They’re on their merry cannibalistic way again. You can power everything back up now.”
Mal turned to face Zoe. “You know, one of these days, the
Zoe looked at Mal strangely. “You know,” she said, “I’m not sure if you’re finally developing a knack for logical reasoning, or if Inara just has your balls hidden away somewhere.”
“Inara does not have my balls hidden anywhere,” Mal replied crossly. “I have no idea why you would even say something like that.”
“Because you’re a horny bastard, Captain,” River said, keeping a completely straight face.
Zoe started laughing. She tried to conceal it, but it was no good, and soon, laughter was pouring out of her in great guffaws. River managed to hold her front for a while, but soon, she was laughing as well.
Mal looked at them and shook his head. “I get no respect. None. None at all. I’d get more respect if I was captain of a ship crewed by monkeys.”
For some reason, Zoe and River found this uproariously funny and were soon collapsed on the floor in laughter. Mal growled under his breath and stalked to the door to head down to engineering – and opened it just in time to see Kaylee and Chuck on the other side.
Chuck looked around Mal. “Wow… ROFL indeed,” he said.
“This looks fun, Captain,” Kaylee said with a smile. “What’s going on?”
Mal growled unintelligibly. Pushing between Chuck and Kaylee, he stormed off down the corridor.
“What did he say?” Zoe said.
“I think he said something about a bulk order of monkeys,” Chuck said.
New peals of laughter burst forth from Zoe and River. “I’m confused,” said Chuck. “What the hell’s going on?”
“Well,” Zoe said, composing herself, “River called Mal a horny bastard, and then he said he’d get more respect if his ship were crewed by monkeys – and – and –“
Zoe collapsed in laughter once more.
Casey looked on in disbelief. “This is our secret weapon?” he asked, incredulous. “This is what we’re going to recover Chuck with? A non-working, test vehicle space shuttle?”
“Oh, no, Major Casey,” General Beckman replied. “The American public just thinks the
“Yes, ma’am,” said Sarah. “So what are we going to be doing here?”
“Well,” General Beckman said, “the technology that Fulcrum stole from Area 51 is something we’ve been working on for a while. It was discovered on an alien ship that crashed south of
“The problem, though, is that while we can calibrate the destination time pretty accurately, we’re still pretty much in the dark on the destination location.”
“Well, that doesn’t seem to do us very much good, now does it?” Casey asked sarcastically. “We go forward to the right year, but we wind up on the other side of the galaxy from where Chuck actually is.”
“Which is why the
Casey’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s… that’s pretty incredible,” he said.
“Damn straight it is,” General Beckman replied. “So here’s the deal. You’re going to stay here in
“A three day crash course in being astronauts?” Sarah inquired. “We’re going to know… well, pretty much nothing.”
“Which is why you’re going to have real astronauts along for the ride,” General Beckman said. “They’ll be your drivers. You’re going as intelligence officers. Your mission is to find Bartowski and bring him home.”
Chuck was lying on the bed in his quarters, the lights dim. He had been told that his quarters, like his reading material, had once belonged to Shepherd Book. He couldn’t get his mind off of what had happened in the engine room earlier. Much as he was trying to not admit it, he had really enjoyed having Kaylee that close to him. After all, he would’ve had to have been blind to not see that she was attractive… and well, his reaction to her, that was just biologi-
At that moment, there was a knock on his door.
“Come in,” Chuck said, sitting up.
And speak of the devil, it was Kaylee. “Hi, Chuck,” she said softly, shyly.
“Hi, Kaylee,” he said back, somewhat less shyly. “What’s up?”
“Listen,” she said. “About what happened earlier… in engineering… um, I guess… I just…”
“Don’t worry,” Chuck said. “It certainly wasn’t your fault that you fell in my lap. You were getting tossed around the engine room, and I happened to catch you.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll see you later.”
She was almost out the door when she turned around. Her face looked a little strange to Chuck, almost as if she were bracing herself for something. When she spoke, she spoke quickly.
“Listen, Chuck, I really think you’re cute, and if you had waited maybe a second longer in engineering to suggest I check in with Captain Reynolds, I probably would’ve kissed you, and oh God I’ve got to go I’ll be in my bunk.”
With that, Kaylee flushed nearly the color of her hair, and disappeared out the door.
Chuck just sat there, staring after her, a shocked yet satisfied grin on his face. Slowly he shook his head, and then, opening the drawer of the desk next to the bed, he pulled out a pen and a pad of paper, and began to write.
Yo Morgan,
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