River’s Run – Chapter 1

Third book in a series that started with “The Return”, followed by “The Return Home”. Please read those for any background information.

The third moon of Paquin was a cloudy, rainy, forest covered world, with some farming settlements hacked out of the thick forests on the one main landmass that was surrounded by water. It was not where River Tam had wanted to go. Four days earlier she had broken out of a prison cell on a gunship that was taking her to Londinium for trial and most likely execution for crimes against the Alliance. Her specific crime was stealing the plans to a Faster Than Light drive that Kaylee had built on Serenity, with a little help from some friends in a far off place. Those plans were sent out on the Cortex and now everyone in the galaxy had seen them. This had angered the Alliance to no end because they had wanted exclusive rights to those plans and so River was promptly arrested. After escaping from the cell of the prison gunship, she had killed some of the crew, and exiled the others on a barren moon where they were soon found. She had also freed one other prisoner, James Patterson, who had decided to stay with her since he faced a death sentence from hard labor on mining colony. His crime had been to help Serenity’s crew in a gunfight with the Alliance. Discovered by an Alliance cruiser near Paquin, they had abandoned the gunship for this small shuttle and hoped to escape on foot on the moon below. Two Alliance fighters had put an end to that plan, slamming slugs into the shuttle and shattering its hull and systems.

As the smoking shattered shuttle from the Alliance gunship River had taken over came in through the clouds, she saw an open field amidst the trees and tried to steer her broken machine for that location. She was in the pilot’s seat strapped in tight. She turned and saw James Patterson, lying on the floor of the shuttle, fear in his eyes, the only sounds the wind whistling through the gapping holes in the fuselage.

“Get strapped in!” she ye