Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, etc. belong not to me, but to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and Fox, and no money is being made here. The story, however, is mine.

I was sitting in the dining room looking over the plan for our big heist. We would be coming up on the dark side of Osiris in mere minutes, and I wanted to make sure everything was in place ready to go. This was an important job, and we needed to make sure it was done right. One slip, and we wouldn’t get another shot to hit the Alliance this hard.

Libby yelled to me from the cockpit. “Eddie! We got a problem!”

I ran down the front hallway, and up the steps into the bridge. I immediately saw something I didn’t like. “Ta ma de jun dan! Is that the Dortmunder?” It was one of those bigass cruisers the Alliance had. And it was hailing us.

“Yes, it’s early. What do you want me to do?”

I was caught between a rock and a hard place at this point. The mission hadn’t even started yet, and it was in danger of being over. Stupid Alliance can’t even hold to their own schedules. After a few seconds of thinking, I had no ideas, and I’m pretty sure Libby was lost too. “Okay, wave Tobias. Tell him I need those access codes A-SAP, and that he needs to speed things up. My guess is some feng le Alliance commander wants to make a good impression on brass by stopping the first vessel that just happens to go anywhere near restricted orbit on a core planet. Oh, and open up an audio channel to the Dortmunder. We don’t want to look suspicious.”

A voice came over the comm line. “Firefly class ship Liberty , be advised, you are entering a restricted orbit. You are ordered to halt immediately.”

Of course, I wasn’t listening. I already knew what I was doing was perfectly legal. I pushed a button to talk back. “We are over point three-three declination off the restricted orbit. We’re only using it for a speed boost.”

We waited for a few seconds to hear back. “Judging by your current path, you are en route to Persephone.” Another p