“You know, next time we rob a ship, remind me to take you with us so you can disable it first.” Mal pushed the button to close the bay, as another explosion shook the ship. He looked up, and was very thankful to see that Wash had already gone, even more thankful when the next time the ship lurched it was because they were launching. He turned to see Kaylee running towards the engine room.

“Thank goodness for a capable crew,” Mal said, before turning to see Jayne trying to get his sleeve out of the door of the hidden compartment. “Boy, isn’t life fun.”

Simon looked around. “Hope the isn’t Alliance,” he thought, before quickly returning his attention to River. She had calmed down now, or at least she had stopped screaming. But she was still muttering quietly to herself.

“It’s coming…it’s coming…and nothing can stop it…it waited out there, but now it has come… the thing from the black….” Simon sighed, and looked over to Book.

“How is she doing, Lad?” Book asked.

“She’s better…” Simon looked at his med kit. If only he had kept some of that Astrogala. The powerful pain killer would have been immensely useful right now…. But no, they simply had to deal with what they had. “Shepard, would you get something from the infirmary? I need something called Akarbard. It should help calm her down….”

“Right” Book hurried out of the room.

“Kaylee, whats our status?” Mal was in the cockpit by now.

“Uh… we’ve got about a dozen pipes close to exploding, two or three pieces almost exploding and if we go to full burn now then the entire engine will probably explode. So about the same as usual.”

Wash hit some buttons on the console, and the ship rocketed towards atmo. The Falnax was firing after them, giant rounds piercing the sky around them, rockets launching, but thankfully not locking on.

“You know, its times like this when I REALLY wish we had some gorram guns on this boat!” yelled Jayne.

Wash grinned. “We have something much better then guns on this boat,” he said, through gritted teeth. “We have me.”

With this, he