‘Is it dead?’ Mal asked. There was a scream, and four of the creatures ran through the debris. They looked pissed. The cigar man swore loud and long. Meanwhile, Mal made his way off the wall, down to Serenity, narrowly missing a tank. He watched as a flare fired into the sky, clearing the air of dust. The intercom screamed for people to evacuate. Ten seconds later, the wall erupted, and the Spectres came pouring in.

That was less than a month ago.

Since then, Mal had been drifting in space. Safest place to be, Jayne had reasoned. Spectres were rarely found on ships, preferring to concentrate on ground forces instead. It was a massacre, nothing less, but even that was naught compared to the orbital bombardment by EXCALIBUR, the Alliance’s shiny new toy. Harnessed energy from outside the universe, or something. Hell, Mal was no rocket scientist, no mechanic. He knew how his ship worked from touch, from knowing, not through a thousand and one degrees.

Mal sat back in his chair up on the bridge, and wondered how everything had come crashing down around him so fast. His crew just packed up and left. Well, most of them, anyway.

Zoë, surprisingly, was the first. As the months wore on after their little visit to Miranda, Zoë became quieter, rarely saying anything. When she did speak, she spoke in one-word sentences. Eventually, the day came that Zoë didn’t talk at all. For three whole weeks, not a word left her lips, until she told Mal she was leaving the ship, that she didn’t feel comfortable working, living in Serenity any more. He’d understood of course, but that didn’t take away from the pain of her departure. She kept in touch every couple of weeks. Weeks that turned into months. She’d been hired by a security firm, guns-for-hire, but legal-like. Mal imagined her as a bodyguard for some high-flying bureaucrat and his mistress. He hadn’t heard from her since the start of the war. Doubted he ever would.

The war itself hit with astoundingly little effect. They still did jobs,