Red Run 14: Hell World

At Ita Moon

Mal waited impatiently near the airlock. His purported ride taking longer than he’d imagined when he’d come down to wait. On the point of abandoning the area and returning to the bridge, Mal heard the chime of the intercom.

“Shuttle craft approaching from Ita Moon processing, Captain,” River advised. “Docking in 90 seconds.”

Nodding his satisfaction at the end of the delay, Mal waited for the shuttle to lock on. “”Bout time,” Mal muttered.

The intercom spoke again. “I’ll be down to the kitchen after I make sure the Captain is away and pick out my weapons, Jayne.” River added soberly.

“That’ll go over well,” Mal thought. “Luckily, I won’t be here to see it.”

A reverberation ran through the deck into Mal’s feet, his only clue that the shuttle had docked. A speaker near the airlock rang out it’s standard dock warning.

Checking to make sure the seals were properly engaged and pressure equalized, Mal waited until the Ita shuttle popped her doors before popping his own. Just common sense in the event that the Ita shuttle was a Trojan horse. In this instance the shuttle failed to disgorge a crowd of heavily armed Federals or slavers, and this suited Mal just fine.

Leaving his ship and walking into the shuttle, Mal observed again the squalid conditions under which Ita Processing treated its guests. Luxuries like a well-lit interior, charming colors of paint on the walls, or a once yearly cleaning were obviously disregarded as wasteful extravagances for the brief passengers that transited to the Ita processing facility abroad the company shuttle. Most of the overhead lighting had blown out, and there were papers and visible dirt littering the floor plates.

Additionally, the shuttle interior was small. Slightly bigger than Serenity’s shuttles, honestly, but seemingly more cramped because of the 20 odd lime green passenger chairs that lined each side of the walls. Fitted as close as they were, elbowroom became an unfunny myth. Or would have, if the shuttle had been oc