River’s Run – Part 14

Serenity drifted without power in a seldom traveled corridor near the Ariel system. The events of the last 24 hours had brought terror, heartache, and now fear to the crew. A simple withdrawal from a bank on Ariel turned deadly as Alliance police showed up to arrest Inara Serra for the murder of her husband Palo Chase on Sihnon. In the ensuing escape, Mal had killed two Alliance policemen and Jayne had been wounded in the shoulder, again. Not too many hours later Derek Bowen had been awaken from his slumber, had walked to the bridge, received a message to kill the crew, and then tried to do just that. Justin Powers was dead, Mal hurt, and Derek was dead from River’s hand. And now a new enemy was stalking them, an Operative of the Parliament, who had somehow built an FTL ship that had just appeared out of nowhere and zapped Serenity with a blue bolt of EMP. As Kaylee, her father and Mary frantically struggled to get power to the ship, Mal started to set in motion his plan to repel boarders. But before anyone could move, a new crisis struck the ship and its gallant crew.

Kaylee knew it was going to happen, she just hoped she could get power restored before it did. Her father also knew it was coming and was the first to notice as a tiny loose screw in the engine room suddenly floated up and hung in the air in the beam of his flashlight.

“It started, Kaylee,” he said in a worried tone.

“Drat!” she said in an uncharacteristic manner. She was on her hands and knees in back of the engine, just removing the last bolt from a floor grating. Down below were the batteries, a large bank of them, and Kaylee had them set to be off line in case of what had just happened. The batteries were shielded from EMP and she just hoped she had given them enough protection from the bolt that had just struck them.

On the bridge, things also began to float and as people began to move toward the corridor in the semi-darkness to start getting armed, they began to feel lighter and had trouble getting their f