A New ‘Verse III-Dash

It had been a while back when he had first met Dash Simmons, in the very first year of the war. He was out on his first posting, on the moon Demeter. It was six months into the battle and it was nighttime…

Sergeant Malcolm Reynolds sprinted towards the impact crater, bullets whizzing by his ears. He snapped off a burst of fire as he ran and dived the last meter, tumbling into the crater, knocking the breath out of his lungs.

“How’d we do Fuzzy?”

Mal turned to his corporal. He lay about ten feet away, on the edge of the crater, his helmet askew, blood pouring from his shattered throat.

“Goa se!”

He army crawled his way back to the young corporal. There was no point. Corporal Viktor ‘Fuzzy’ Fuzzinkski was dead, probably dead as soon as the bullet had hit him. Mal cursed again, then set about the task of rifling the young soldier's body for ammo and other valuables. He took out a red leather bound diary and snapped off the man’s dog tags, shoving them in his belt pouch.

Turning, he crawled to the other edge of the crater; the smell of shell burst and burnt soil filling his nostrils, as they had done since he came to this blasted planet. Now he was cut off from the rest of his unit and by the amount of gunfire he was hearing from the Alliance lines, it didn’t look like he would be getting back any time soon. If he would make it back at all.

“Gorram it.” He muttered under his breath, pulling his canteen from his pocket and taking a swig. At least they wouldn’t have any more trouble from the 80-cal emplacement on the hill. Together with Fuzzy and two other guys from the remains of the 76th they had managed to make the four guns mostly unusable. The other two had not made it through the sabotage mission and Mal and Fuzzy had been heading back to where Zoe had the rest of their platoon holed up. Maybe the Alliance could find someone who could repair those guns but Mal seriously doubted it. The Alliances biggest flaw was the lack of multitasking within their ranks. There was probably o