Lost Souls: part one

by Kayna

“Mal, could you come to the bridge, please?”

“Gah! What?” Mal said as River’s voice over the com woke him out of a sound sleep. That was all right, though; he’d been having bad dreams – about the war he thought, or maybe not. Wash and Book had been there; so had a lot of other dead people. It was all mixed up. Didn’t really matter though, he was awake now and the nightmare was fading.

“I said, ‘could you come to the bridge?’. We need to show you something.”

“Uh, yeah. Sure. Be right there.”

He headed to the bridge, thinking about the people waiting for him there. River had sounded all right on the com and she did seem to be doing better since Miranda. He hoped it would last but he couldn’t be sure which was why Zoe would be there with her. Zoe. She seemed fine on the surface but she didn’t smile anymore. He understood that in a way, Wash had been everything to her and Mal knew what it was like to lose everything. His wounds had finally started to heal, though. There would always be scars but even the new ones were closing. He hoped Zoe’s would too. He was pulled from his reverie as he entered the bridge and looked up.

“Tzao gao.”

Floating outside, just beyond the cockpit were the remains of what had one been a ship. He couldn’t be sure what kind it had been, maybe a transport, not much bigger than Serenity, he thought. One thing he did know was that something bad had happened here. Part of him didn’t want to look at the debris – he was pretty sure there’d be people in there – but he did anyway. There might be something still intact in all that mess that could be of use.

“What the hell is this?” he asked.

“This, Captain, is Polaris. Transport ship, Aurora class. Mackenzie Conners, Captain.”

“Now how do you know all that?”

“A message, transmitting from just the other side of all this mess. That’s the first thing it said. Thought we’d wait for you to play the rest.”

“There’s someone out there. Alive, but just barely.”

Before