A/N: Here is the next installment. Hope you like it.

“We need to finish,” Zoe prompted Simon.

He took a deep breath in.

“I know,” he said hollowly. “What do we need to do?”

“I’m going to the engine room. When I tell you, I want you to give a short burst from the thrusters. I don’t want us to go too fast. That other ship could still be Reavers and we can’t look like we are running. I just want to move us away from here.”

“You want to give the allusion that we’re drifting?”

“That’ll be a start. Wait for my signal,” Zoe said. She turned and exited the bridge. She got down to the engine room and set the controls as they needed to be. “Now Simon!”

Simon let the thrusters burn for about 20 seconds and then cut them off. Zoe shut down all power to the ship, including life support. She made her way back to the bridge, sealing up the doors as she went. When she got to the bridge, she sealed the last door.

“How’s it look?” she asked.

“We’re moving away from them. No one is following,” Simon reported. The ship was dark except a single indicator on the console. “Did you shut everything down?”

“Even life support. Only thing on is the comms. I want to know who we’re dealing with should anyone come calling. Did you know that an encrypted message was sent out when I keyed in the Plan’s execution code?”

“There was?” Simon questioned as he stood up. “You don’t know who it was sent to?”

“No,” Zoe said as she shook her head. “Must have been important though, I mean, for Mal to send out something like that to someone outside this ship.”

Simon nodded in agreement.

“How long are we going to stay like this?” he asked.

“I don’t want to fire things up until it is totally necessary.”

“I agree,” Simon concurred as he walked over to the lockers. “I’m going to get us some blankets. As we know from our past experience with no life support, it’s going to get cold in here.”

Simon opened the locker that he needed. He reached into the locker and st