The Return – Part 11

“Moonbase Armstrong, this is Serenity, come in Moonbase Armstrong,” Wash spoke into the long range comms. After a few seconds of static the reply came back, a female comms tech.

“Roger, Serenity, Moonbase Armstrong, over.”

“Roger, Moonbase, would like to have a word with Zoe Washburne if it’s no trouble, over.”

“Understood, Serenity. Call back in ten minutes, over.”

“Roger. Serenity, out.”

“Ten minutes,” said Mal, pondering, wondering what’s going on. “Guess she’s having dinner or something. One thing’s for sure, she ain’t in charge yet.”

“That plan was kind of a long shot anyways, Mal. I mean they got at least twenty or more armed men up there.”

“Yeah,” Mal replied. “At least, and we don’t know who’s with Jackson and who ain’t.”

“What about the folks with us?”

“Chin is Jackson’s man for sure, Miller too, if he wasn’t he sure is now after I punched his lights out. Tanya, I got a good feeling about her and the others. But you never can tell.”

“What’s our plan, Mal? I mean, just few of us, we go blazing in there like at the Skyplex we might have a chance or all might end up dead. Awful risky.”

“Might need some reinforcements.”

“Reinforcements from where?”

*************************************************

Kaylee, Tanya, Christine and Fred were cleaning up the cargo bay after the small party, moving chairs back to the passenger lounge and picking up empty beer bottles and food wrappers.

“You think they really have a spaceship?” Christine asked Tanya, the moon base’s resident aerospace engineering expert.

“Who knows?” she replied. “If they say it’s intact it may be possible to repair. Miller and his big mouth. He’s such a fool.”

“A pompous fool,” Fred added

“Capt’n don’t take kindly to people not following orders,” Kaylee told them. “Even hit Simon a few times in the past.”

That shocked everyone still and Tanya asked why.

Kaylee had opened up a bit too much, knowing it was too hard to explain about why Simon was on board Serenity and why