Previous chapters include:

Honest Run: Dance

Honest Run: Dignity

Honest Run

A special thanks to Guildsister for her much needed critical Beta reading.

The offending dials were in the red. Panels were flashing.

All telling Simon there was a problem.

He knew that much.

In the rear of the shuttle, he mopped his brow of sweat brought on by a sudden inexplicable heat. Systematically, he began drawing from the only training that he had. Medical troubleshooting. He had no idea what he was supposed to do. There was a malfunction, but this wasn’t anything he had knowledge about.

“What am I looking for?” he asked the captain.

“Hell, if I know,” the captain said. There was some Mandarin cursing of which Wash figured prominently.

“What is the problem?” the doctor brushed his hair back, “What does the console tell you? It has to be alluding to some kind of system…”

“It tells me something is wrong,” Mal told him, no end of irony in his voice, “Damn shuttle’s handling like a brick.”

“You’ve lost maneuvering thrusters?” Simon stared at the angry blinking panels reading the warnings in both Chinese and English. He punched at some buttons, trying to get past the warnings. His fingers came away with plastic molasses on their tips, “Marvelous,” he said quietly.

“Port side, mostly,” Mal yelled back, “Starboard’s fine.”

Simon turned around. He had been on the wrong side. However, nearly all the readouts on this side, the port side, were blanked out and sweating some kind of insulation from the seams, “Port side. That’s left, isn’t it?” And the heat was that more intense just that half a step away... His chest was heavier for a breath.

There was a pause, “Yeah.”

Of course it was left, dummy. It was River’s voice originated the mental comment. T