3. Now I’m Learning About ‘Scary’

Before Miranda

The trap was beautifully laid, and Wash walked right into it. Aught-three Firefly, same model as Serenity. Intact – so the scrapyard attendant said -- except for her burned-up accelerator core and some associated engine damage. Wash went right for it. And he’d no sooner got to it than he found himself staring down the barrels of two different firearms – one in front of him, one behind.

Wash raised both hands in the air, and turned so his back was to the ship’s hull, which gave him a view of both gunmen. “Whoa. Fellahs. If you had dibs on this ship, I can sure go somewhere else. No shooting necessary.”

They didn’t reply. One fired, and Wash felt the impact in his neck. Had it been a bullet, it would have put him on the ground, gasping and choking on his own blood. But it wasn’t a bullet, it was a tranquilizer dart – something he barely had time to understand before it put him on the ground just the same.

The gunmen grabbed him and dragged him to the airlock, where two orderlies in surgical scrubs took over, dragging him into the Firefly’s cargo bay. It looked much like Serenity’s. Beyond the cargo bay, though, was an infirmary which looked nothing like Serenity’s. It had, in fact, been done over into a fully equipped dual surgical suite. A surgeon, two surgical techs, and an Alliance Commander named Coles stood waiting inside; on one of the operating tables was an unconscious man who looked a lot like Serenity’s pilot.

“Get him on the table. We don’t have a lot of time,” Coles snapped. The techs hefted the limp form – one Hoban Washburne, about whom Coles knew far more than he actually cared to -- onto the table, where one tech placed a mask over his face and started dosing him with anesthesia, and the other started wrestling Washburne out of his clothes.

The officer paced impatiently from the foot of one operating table to the other, his eyes going from Washburne to t