Action! Adventure! Sex! Guns! Humour! Reverberations.

Disclaimer: these characters don't belong to me. I'm just messing with them a bit.

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Wash slammed his fist on the Serenity’s pilot console, sending a brontosauras skittering atop the nav monitor. The toy dinosaur ended up on its back, legs meekly flailed roofward, at that moment looking every bit as helpless as Wash felt.

He’d arrived on the bridge too late. With Serenity on autopilot, the intruders’ ship’s pilot obviously had plenty of time to line up an efficient trajectory. A course leaving ample opportunity to engage magnetic grapplers well before Wash, or for that matter, anyone else, could react to the proximity alarm and scramble up to the bridge to effect evasive manoeuvers. Which, clearly, was the point. Didn’t make Wash feel any better. And from here it looked like ... oh man! a clapped-out Trans-U! This wasn’t happening!

Humped. Well and truly humped.

Allright. Precious time taken for a deep breath. Then another. Wash knew he was at his best when calm. So, one forced calmness: pilot’s trick. A fast scan across the monitors.... Deng yi miao, fore portcam’s got a good view on the U’s bulkhead, closing rapidly. Right! First priority: alert the crew. Wash got on the comm, shipwide broadcast mode. “Uh, folks,” he began, even as he realized maybe some sense of urgency might be appropriate. Screaming just might do. “Full Alert! People, we’re gonna be boarded! Grapplers, the whole gorram shebang! Looks like they’ll be comin’ at us through the cargo bay! Repeat....”

Wash repeated variations of this message three times, nearly swallowing the mic with each announcement. Damn thing would’ve been imbedded in his maw when the Trans-U whoompfed! against Serenity’s hull, but that the force of the impact sent him tumbling out of his chair.

The full gamut of flashing monitor alerts lit up the console. Dozens of warning lights began pulsing frenetically from the ship’s systems