Title: Stars on Fire
By Nopporn Wongrassamee
Summary: Starbuck and the crew of Serenity get to know each other.
Disclaimer: All properties belong to their respective owners who I am too lazy to look up and list.
Chapter 4: Impressions
"Thrust," River said, holding up the winged toy for Kara to see. While making whooshing sounds, she moved the toy forward while miming something coming out the rear end. As River was the ship's pilot, Kara assumed that she was talking about ship movements and not making dirty jokes.
Kara had never seen ship controls with such eccentric decorations in the Colonies. The most she had ever heard of was an urban legend about the pilot who kept fuzzy dice in his cockpit. One of this ship's piloting stations was festooned with small, plastic toy animals.
What were they supposed to be anyway? Some kind of dragons?
"Thrust," Kara replied in her own language, then repeated in River's, "Thrust."
"Thrust," River repeated in modern Colonial, beaming at Kara. River had no doubt memorized the word and its meaning in this single lesson. Her memory was amazingly good like that and she always seemed to know what Kara meant while Kara had to struggle with River's language.
Sometimes, Kara wondered if River was a Cylon plant. Maybe she already knew modern Colonial and was only pretending not to. If River was a machine, then she could be programmed with the skill needed to fly a ship, explaining why she could fly the ship at such a young age. Oh, gods, it made so much sense…
"Roll," River continued, demonstrating with the toy what she meant, turning it over both ways. She grinned impishly at Kara and winked. "Roll," River repeated while nudging the ship's control yoke. Because of the ship's artificial gravity, the deck remained solidly underneath their feet. However, the stars outside appeared to go into a gut wrenching spin. It was gut wrenching because anyone looking outside would have had a bout of nausea as their eyes and inner ear disagreed on what was really happening. Only the best pilots like Kara wouldn't be put off by the display.
Judging by the sound of cursing coming corridor, several members of the crew did not fall under the category of "best pilot".
"Roll," River repeated again, throwing a look at the yoke in front of Kara.
"Roll," Kara replied. Catching on, she translated to Colonial. "Roll," she said, nudging her own control yoke in the opposite direction. The spinning starscape suddenly started spinning in the other direction. There was more cursing from the rear.
"What the gorram hell is going on up here?" demanded the ship's captain as he stormed onto the bridge. Kara still couldn't quite follow what he was saying, but by his tone of voice, it was pretty obvious what he was demanding.
While River placated the man, Kara took a moment to study him out of the corner of her eye. For all that they looked nothing alike, this man sorely reminded her of William Adama. In the few hours that she had been aboard, she had already observed that he had a kind of family relationship with the crew.
From the language impaired introductions she had earlier, Kara had learned that his name was Mal.
"Zoë?" Mal said calmly, not taking his eyes off the strange woman they had just rescued. "Why didn't I understand a word that she just said?"
"Could be that she didn't speak English or Chinese, sir," Zoë replied.
"What else is there to speak?" Jayne asked.
"There are languages other than English and Chinese," Zoë replied. "They even speak a few of 'em on some worlds." She frowned. "Although I don't know what she said, something about it seems familiar."
"Yes, well, I ain't got time for playing guessing games," Mal groused. To their visitor, he said, "Look, can you speak something we can all understand?"
The woman replied with a gabble of nonsense.
Mal repeated the question in Chinese.
The woman just looked confused. She patted herself with her right hand and repeated the word "Kara".
"Right," Mal muttered. "Amazing as it seems, she don't speak English or Chinese. Anyone have any idea what she's saying?"
"I think she's trying to say her name's 'Kara'," Jayne said.
"Right. Yes. Of course it is," Mal said quickly. "I mean besides that."
"Nope," Jayne replied. "That's all she's saying. Her name's Kara."
This ship – Kara had gathered from her language lessons with River that it was named Serenity – was odd. There was the weird mixture of the highly advanced and the primitive. Despite their obvious well worn use, the computers and avionics looked to be more advanced than anything the Colonials had ever had. Of course, Kara wasn't a computer expert, but all the displays were touch screens except for the small holographic projector. Even before the First Cylon War, the Colonials had considered touchscreens as expensive toys and freestanding holograms were only a pipedream.
On the flip side, the dining room had featured a wooden table. It wasn't a finely crafted piece of furniture that one might see on a luxury liner like the Cloud 9. No, Serenity's table was a rough hewn collection of planks and boards worn smooth through much use. It had obviously been bought on the cheap, but Kara wondered what freak law of economics had made wood cheaper than plastic.
Heading rearward from the bridge, Kara came across Jane sitting at said table. In the Colonies, "Jane" was a girl's name. That this big, burly man was named Jane spoke volumes of the cultural differences between Kara's people and the people who lived in this system.
At the moment, Jane had a truly impressive variety of guns neatly arranged on the table. He had one partially disassembled for cleaning. Back before the Holocaust, Kara had known a few marines who were avid gun collectors. They didn't have anything like the variety Jane had.
She caught Jane's eye and pointed at one of his weapons. "Can I look at that?" she asked.
Jane looked at her suspiciously. Then his eyes darted to Kara's hip where her own sidearm was holstered and asked something in his own language. From her brief lessons with River, Kara thought she caught "I" and a word that might have been "look" or "see".
Praying that she hadn't misinterpreted and was about to get herself shot, Kara slowly drew her own weapon and offered it handle first to Jane. Luck or the gods were with her. Jane accepted with a grin and did the same with the pistol Kara had pointed at.
Examining the alien gun, Kara could not at first figure out how the thing operated. Then she realized that the bullets were held in a revolving chamber. Gun technology had been around almost as long as the Colonies had been settled. The last time she had seen a revolver in person had been in a museum. The Colonies hadn't made any revolvers in centuries except as historical props. This one in Kara's hand not only looked to have been made recently, it was also well used.
Why were these people so advanced in some respects yet so primitive in others? It was a mystery Kara intended to solve.
This Kara was a mystery.
Zoë didn't like mysteries. Too often in her experience, mysteries had a way of turning around and biting them in the ass. She wanted to know where this woman came from and what she was up to.
While pretending to be puttering around the kitchen, Zoë observed Kara compare weapons with Jayne. Kara was obviously military of some sort. But she didn't speak English or Chinese, didn't have a uniform from any military that Zoë recognized. And although she tried to cover it up, Kara had that wide-eyed tourist look since coming on board.
The clincher was that Zoë didn't recognize Kara's language. Although none of the others knew it, Zoë knew a lot of languages other than English and Chinese. Explaining to the others how she knew so many languages would have been a bit awkward, never mind that she didn't like thinking about it.
Zoë didn't like thinking about the past. There was too much hurt there, especially this soon after Wash… after Miranda. She preferred to live in the Now.
But Kara was military, flying an obviously military ship, without being able to speak to any of the local militaries. The conclusion was obvious. Kara wasn't local; she was from somewhere other than the Blue Sun system.
Of course, the devil was in the details and how to get them. At the moment, Kara couldn't explain even if she wanted to. Zoë could try asking River, but the girl had kept Zoë's secrets as well as Book's whatever they had been. Asking River to reveal secrets was a slippery slope that was best not taken.
For now, Zoë decided that the best bet was to let Kara learn the language. Eventually, she'll learn enough to explain herself. Or she would get kicked off the ship first. Or an emergency would come up forcing the issue. Probably that last one knowing her crew. Any which way, waiting seemed to be the best bet.
After all, Zoë had nothing but time.
"Say, ah," the young man, Simon, said. Okay, he wasn't that young really, maybe around Kara's age. But he had this youthful, naïve air about him that no one from the Colonies had had since the Holocaust.
"Ah?" Kara repeated questioningly.
"Aaaahhhhh," Simon demonstrated by opening up his mouth wide and screwing his face up something fierce.
"Ah…" Kara said doubtfully. In truth, she had been through enough medical exams that she had a general idea of what Simon wanted. She was just having too much fun getting him to make stupid faces by playing dumb. Doc Cottle would never have been so fooled.
As the ship's medic, Simon seemed to know what he was doing and his sickbay was substantially cleaner than the rest of the ship, but Kara wondered what his actual qualifications were. It seemed like all the technical positions on this ship, the pilot, engineer, and doctor, were all staffed by ridiculously youthful personnel. Kara figured that these three must be geniuses in their field, the local star system had an education system that put the Colonials to shame, or Serenity's captain was an idiot.
Unfortunately, the last possibility seemed most likely.
"Well, Doc?" Mal began. "What do you make of her?"
"Captain," Simon replied. "Kara is a reasonably healthy young woman in her twenties. She has had a knee injury some time in the past that has healed over. There are also some signs of minor vitamin deficiencies in her diet, but nothing serious."
"That's it?"
"Well, I can't tell you anymore without better equipment than what I have here," Simon told him. He made a great show of deep thinking. "Although I suppose we could go looking for an Alliance hospital we could break into for a neural imager to use."
"I'm not that curious, Doc."
"Didn't think you were, Captain."
As Mal headed out the door, he paused and turned back to Simon.
"Doc, they teach you any fancy dead languages in medical school?" At Simon's questioning look, he elaborated. "I mean, I hear medical speak borrows a lot from some dead language or other."
"Greek and Latin," Simon said. "And a lot of modern medical jargon was created from those languages though we aren't taught the actual languages." Now he looked thoughtful for real. "Now that you mention it, Kara's language does seem to borrow a few Greek root words. But that can be said for just about any European language."
"You row what?" Mal said in confusion.
"Oh my gods…" Kara moaned in horror.
Against all odds, Kara had somehow convinced Mal to take the Blackbird aboard. The procedure had been laborious and involved depressurizing Serenity's cargo bay. But it had been done only minimal damage. Kara had been relieved that she would be able to tell Chief Tyrol that his baby was alright… if one didn't count the ship's inability to power up.
Kara's relief might have been premature. Every panel on the ship was opened up. Parts were strewn everywhere. Kara couldn't even imagine how to put it all back together in shouting distance of working order.
At the sound of Kara's voice, the head of Serenity's engineer popped up from behind the Blackbird. "Hi, Kara!" Kaylee chirped, beaming a smile at her. She continued with a fast paced chatter in her own language that Kara couldn't follow.
"What have you done?" Kara asked, not in the least bit mollified. "Do you even have any idea what you're doing? This is a highly advanced piece of Colonial technology. I mean sure it was assembled from spare parts, but that doesn't mean you can just take it apart and make it work. You have to be an expert…"
Kaylee reached into the cockpit and flipped a switch. The panels lit up. The ship started humming and lifted several inches to hover off the deck as its grav systems came online. To Kara's practiced ear, the engines whining on standby were running perfectly.
Kaylee turned and grinned at Kara. "Good?" she asked.
Kara could only hang her mouth open like a complete loon.
Mal found Kaylee and River together whispering furiously to each other in the dining room at the corner table. Under normal circumstances, he would assume that they were being friends, discussing girl talk and other Things Men Were Not Supposed To Know. But Mal found it a bit worrisome when his genius mechanic and super genius pilot were doing "girl talk" over what looked to be Serenity's schematics.
Mal casually wandered over to them. That's right. He was completely casual, doing nothing to spook them or make them wary. The girl talk cut off when they noticed him.
"So," he began. "What're you two planning?"
Oh, yeah. He was the soul of subtlety.
The girls glanced at each other. "Planning? We ain't planning anything, Captain," Kaylee said nervously. She was so cute when she was trying to lie. "We're just, uh, um… Hey, did you know that Kara's ship runs on tyleum?"
River face fell into her hands, obviously embarrassed at her friend's clumsy attempt at changing the subject.
"Okay, sure," Mal said, deciding to humor Kaylee for now. "What's tyleum?"
"Oh, it's like this shiny new fuel additive that's being tested in the Core," Kaylee said enthusiastically. "Get's a lot more bang than standard radion cores, even military ones. You could run Serenity for years with the tyleum just in Kara's ship."
"Is that what you're planning?" Mal asked, pointing at the schematics.
"Oh no," Kaylee replied. "We don't wanna do anything too hasty."
"Fuel ratios need to be calculated," River added. "Reactors need to be rebuilt to control tyleum flows. Computers need to reprogrammed with revised engine performance statistics." She frowned. "Not enough data on dynamic quantum nuclear properties of tyleum has been published to make accurate predictions on power output. Probable outcome is runaway reaction resulting in catastrophic containment failure."
"Huh?"
"We'd blow ourselves up."
"Oh, that's bad." Mal took a moment to collect his thoughts. "Don't do that," he ordered, wagging a finger at them.
"Okay, Captain," Kaylee said, cheerful again.
"Now, what were you really doing?" Mal asked.
"Uh… it's a surprise?" Kaylee said hopefully.
"Y'know what, Kaylee?" Mal said patiently. "I hate surprises, especially if they blow us up."
"Well…"
"We're looking to reconfigure Serenity's gravity systems," River interrupted, "to enable superluminal translocation via simultaneous macroscopic quantum shift with no deleterious after effects on ship, cargo, or crew."
"Um…" Mal looked poleaxed. He knew he looked poleaxed. He could follow the first part of what River said and some of the last part. But the middle stuff confused him mightily. "And this won't blow us up?"
"No, Captain," the girls chorused.
"Right," Mal said, nodding sagely as he wandered away. "Keep on with… whatever you're doing."
When Mal was out of earshot, Kaylee turned to River. "How'd you do that?" Kaylee asked.
"Captain is not an idiot," River said wisely. "Captain can tell when he is being lied to. Truth is always better for obfuscation."
"So he didn't understand it when you said we were giving Serenity faster than light ability?" Kaylee asked.
"I believe the term is 'technobabble'," River replied. "Now, if we take the second backup relay here…"
The Cylon Raider was one of many coasting into the blue giant system. Its parent Basestar had scattered its Raiders widely in order to maximize information gathering. The Raider and its brothers were coming in off plane from where the planets orbited, affording them an excellent look down into the system with minimum obstruction. Also, being off plane minimized any chance encounters with local ships.
In this Raider's case, it had encountered ships anyway. The ships did not fit the profile of Colonial refugees. There were too many of them. Moreover, they were putting out an intolerable amount of radiation.
Standing orders were to avoid contact. The Raider was coasting with its thrusters down. It was also close enough that the strange ships could not possibly miss the thermal plume from the Raider's exhaust. Since the strange ships were ignoring it, the Raider calculated an excellent probability that it had not yet been seen...
The harpoon that impaled the Raider through its brain was made of a strong composite material normally used as bracing component in ship reactor cores. The material had the virtue of being unable to become radioactive during prolonged exposure to radiation. This same property made it virtually invisible to the Raider's standard DRADIS gear.
As one, the Reaver fleet turned, backtracking the now dead Raider's course.