A/N: Okay, here we go - the rescue begins. Just keep in mind we're only halfway through this story - in case you were wondering!

Thanks once more to Kaynara and Leiasky.

And while I don't really want to let lose the space monkeys ... I will - so comment!

River watched the controls, studying the readouts as she did her best to sync up Serenity's presence with the now attached transport ship. Mal, Zoe and Jayne had already disembarked. River had wanted to join them, knowing she could be more than useful in a firefight, but Mal had insisted she stay with Serenity. We’re gonna need a fast getaway, darlin’, he’d told her, his eyes full of the mischievous twinkle they always held before a job. I need my pilot at the controls.

So, with very little argument, River had stayed behind with Badger, still trussed up in the passenger dorms, and Rafe. Shivering slightly, River pulled her knees up into her chest, wrapping her long, sinewy arms around them. She had not spoken to Rafe since her outburst in the galley a few hours ago and he had not come to find her either. She knew that Mal had told him more about her – about her ability to kill and fight like the assassin she’d been trained to be. She knew because she had felt Rafe’s repulsion at the realization of what she truly was and his immense pity at the girl she could no longer be.

Shaking the thoughts away, River turned her attention to the job at hand. Whatever she had had with Rafe or wanted with him was not meant to be – she was not meant to be a normal woman with feelings and passions. Those things would only serve to confuse her, to further aggravate the schism the Alliance had placed in her mind between killer and human, assassin and woman. While Rafe’s presence for a time had managed to calm her, anytime River tried to be both – tried to reconcile her special psychic abilities and her feelings for him, she could not strike a b