TITLE: "ACCEPTABLE LOSSES"

AUTHOR: Alison M. DOBELL

FANDOM: "FIREFLY"

PAIRING: Zoe/Wash. Kaylee/Simon. Mal/Inara.

RATING: G.

STATUS: Sequel to "PLAYING WITH FIRE".

ARCHIVE: Yes. Just let me know where.

FEEDBACK: Welcomed.

EMAIL: AlisonMDobell@aol.com

WEBSITE: None. All Firefly stories archived at Fireflyfans.net

SUMMARY: "Inara returns to Serenity and while Cyan Barbette

panics over the fate of her son Inara is more concerned about a

certain Firefly Captain."

The usual disclaimers apply. The characters and 'Firefly'

are the property and gift of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.

No infringement of copyright is intended.

"ACCEPTABLE LOSSES"

"Firefly" story

Written by Alison M. DOBELL

* * * * *

The master control room was heavily shielded and had more failsafes on it than the central economic repository that the Alliance had hidden on Ita Moon. Not that you could find it without very specific instructions, your own individual air supply, and access to the deepest drop elevator in existence. Add to that the knowledge of some very heavily encrypted codes and a DNA and retinal scan to confirm identity and access clearance. Even those with legitimate access didn't always gain entry. Authorisation changed from day to day, sometimes hour to hour. Then there was this surveillance control room. Situated in an isolated pocket of nowhere, inside a specially terraformed piece of rock called A-24870. It had once been an asteroid and with the use of some very advanced technology still looked and acted like one except for one salient fact. It was no longer in an asteroid field.

Marty Carlson and Ivan de la Ware had the donkey shift, so called because they ended up with the bulk of the workload. While the black of space was all around them their own time keeping mechanisms aligned the monotony of space with the time on Osiris. They worked, ate, slept according to the arbitary increments of time. The ch