He had been embarrassingly separated from his ship. In order to avoid getting pinched on a job, he'd had to order his first mate, pilot, mechanic and gun-hand to all take off without him. He was none too pleased with that, but they'd promised to lay over on Sihnon until either he got there or waved them to come and get him. Being as it would be difficult for him to wave them to come and fetch him while it would be suspicious of his ship to be returning so soon, that meant he had to at least get to the next planet before he could make that wave.

"You lookin' for passage to anyplace particular?" asked a man as he wandered the docks, alternately looking at ships and their destinations.

"Sihnon for choice," he answered.

The man smiled. "That's where we're headed for our next port," he divulged.

"How fast you getting there, and how much is the fare?"

"We go by the back routes, with all the passengers in cryo for the longer trip. We're the cheapest ship in the docks 'cause of that."

"You the captain?"

"I am," the man agreed with a smile, and extended his hand to shake. "Tom Mitchell."

He nodded and shook the offered hand. "Mal. Nice t' meetcha," he said. "What do you do about Reavers?"

"We travel at a drifting speed," Tom Mitchell explained. "Like I said, long trip. Travelling at drifting speed, Reavers haven't ever bothered us."

"Can I get me a pod near the front?" Mal questioned.

"Got any personals?"

"Only what's on my person."

Tom Mitchell chuckled and nodded. "Then sure," he agreed. "Welcome aboard the Hunter Gratzner."

~oOo~

Mal came awake to the sound of emergency sirens an a man yelling – a man yelling something Mal most sincerely hoped did not mean what he thought it meant.

"Don't you touch that handle Fry!"

It was answered with a yelled "Owens!" that sounded utterly enraged, enraged in a way only a woman can be.

"Seventy seconds, Fry! You've still got seventy seconds to level this beast out!" that first voice yelled.

Mal decided that was his cue to get the hell out of the cryo pod. He wasn't the same deft touch that Wash was, but he'd learned a thing or two about flying since he'd taken on his own ship.

"How the hell does a person get out of these things?" Mal grumbled to himself as he inspected the inside of the pod.

And then there was a crashing like nothing he'd felt since the war had ended, and Mal got just a tiny bit more frantic about figuring out the release. The problem wasn't the great big switch that opened the door of the pod, the problem was the straps that held him 'comfortably' upright and the places the cryo drugs had been being pumped into him.

He figured it out while the ship was grinding to a halt, and as soon as he was free of his pod he moved to the one next to him. Had a kid in it that was pounding on the glass because the lever was too high to reach.

"So, I guess something went wrong?" the kid asked as Mal moved to the air-lock doors between their pods and the cockpit.

"Some days kid, I think my momma cursed me when she named me 'Mal'," he answered with as much humour as he could muster. "Things never go smooth," he complained.

The kid chuckled anyway, comforted that, even if their situation was potentially very bad, there was an adult that was cracking jokes and acting like even crashing was normal, rather than panicking.

"What's your name, Kid?" Mal asked as he found a half-buried body and worked to un-bury it, strapped as it was to the navigator's chair.

"Jack."

"An' that's short for...?" Mal prompted.

"Jack," the kid said firmly.

Mal chuckled. "Smart kid," he praised softly. Then... "Oh ai ya jewh leh," Mal said soberly as he revealed a man, still strapped to his chair, with a broken-off piece of metal through his chest.

"Mister Mal, there's another guy dead in this pod," Jack stated quietly.

Mal twisted and swallowed tightly. "That, kid, is the captain of this boat," he said, and anger began to supplement grief. "What kind of liu kou shui de biao zi he hou zi de er zi doesn't even stay awake on his own ship?" he demanded a little tightly.

Jack raised an eyebrow at Mal. "I'm gonna guess that wasn't a nice thing to say."

Mal chuckled weakly. "You'd guess right," he confirmed, and then behind him the man with the stick of metal through his chest, the man still bleeding out, woke up with a scream.

Mal whipped his gun off his hip fast as Jack could blink, and put a bullet between the man's eyes.

"What did you do that for?" Jack demanded.

Mal knelt down a bit so he was on a level with the kid. "That was a piece of mercy," he told the kid firmly. "Man was dying, dead already really, but his brain hadn't caught up with it yet. Quick death was the only kindness I could give him. Understand?"

Slowly, Jack nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I get it."

"Thank you," a small voice said from behind Mal.

Man and child turned to see who'd spoken. It was a young woman, blonde hair, blue eyes, frail looking thing wearing the same uniform as the man Mal had just shot.

"Didn't do it for you," Mal informed the woman plainly. "Did it for him."

The woman nodded tightly, and crumpled to the floor beside the dead man. "Owens... I... I'm sorry," she whispered to the dead man.

Mal tapped Jack on the shoulder and gestured that they should leave the woman to grieve for a moment.

Jack nodded, and followed him out.

~oOo~

"So, what part of the 'verse are you from?" Jack asked. "I never heard anybody talk like you before."

Mal chuckled. "I'm from all over," Mal answered easily. "Travel is part of my business these days."

"So, what? You're always riding on ships like this one?" Jack queried.

Mal shook his head. "Got my own," he explained. "Had to stay behind for a bit while it went on to Sihnon though, so I had to get passage on a different ship." Mal sighed as he looked out at the wreckage left by the landing. "Looks like I picked the wrong ship."

"I guess that kinda puts a dampener on any ideas of scouting for other survivors," a new voice said, coming up along side. A woman.

"I'd say it does at that," Mal agreed with a glance at the woman.

"Is anybody else having any difficulty breathing?" a man's voice, cultured and probably used to dealing with Core folk, asked.

"Like I'm one lung short," agreed the woman.

"Like I just ran or something," Jack reaffirmed, and tried to breathe a little deeper.

Mal hopped out of the wreckage and looked up and around, scanning the full horizon as he turned three-hundred and sixty degrees.

"Huh," he said, stunned, impressed, and deeply unimpressed all at once.

"What?" Jack asked.

"Three suns," he answered the kid. "That's probably why the atmosphere is so thin."

"Three suns?!" Jack repeated, eyebrows shooting up.

"I don't believe I stuttered," Mal confirmed. "Well, let's get to work."

"Work?" Jake questioned.

"What are you talking about?" came the soft demand from the man with the Core accent.

"We have had the misfortune to land in a desert," Mal stated plainly. "If we want to survive until a rescue comes, or somehow facilitate our own rescue, we've got things to be doing."

"Man's not wrong," agreed a darker-skinned man.

"And even with three suns," Mal continued, "there's gonna be night at some point, and I'll wager that it'll get cold, so let's try and save anything we can burn too."

"This will teach me to fly coach," muttered the Core man with a resigned sigh.

"Who died an' made you captain?" asked a blonde, blue-eyed man wearing a blue uniform an a tin badge.

Mal raised an eyebrow at the man who was either a purple-belly or a merc pretending to be one. Either option he didn't much care for. "Well, the captain of this ship is dead. In fact, only member of the crew still alive is the pilot. I was on my way back to my own ship, of which I am captain."

"Got much experience surviving these sorts of conditions?" the woman asked with a sweeping gesture.

"A few years worth," Mal allowed, and once more allowed his memories of Serenity Valley to return to the forefront of his mind, rather than lingering constantly around the edges like they did most days.

"Then that's good enough for me," the woman decided. "I'm Shazza," she said, starting of the introductions, "and this here is my man Zeke," she added with a gesture to the darker-skinned man beside her.

"Paris P. Ogilvie," the Core man said. "Antiques dealer, entrepreneur."

"I am Abu al-Walid, an Imam. These three are Suliman, Hassan and Ali," declared a man with even darker skin than Zeke as he and three boys (two teens and one who probably wouldn't reach double-digits for a few years... if he survived this, that is) emerged from the wreck.

"Johns," supplied the blonde, blue-eyed man.

"That a first name or a last name?" Jack asked.

"William J. Johns," expounded the man.

"I'm Mal, Captain Reynolds of my own boat that is elsewhere, and this is Jack," Mal supplied. "I suggest we get to salvaging."

"Right," Shazza agreed.

"What about burying those that have died?" the Imam asked solemnly.

Mal shook his head. "If you've got the energy to see to the dead, then you've got energy to help keep the rest of us alive," he said firmly. "Not meanin' to disrespect 'em none, but the livin' take priority over the dead."

"Thank you for letting me grieve though," a new voice joined in. The pilot had finally joined them.

"Mei wen ti," Mal answered with a nod.

"What happened?" Zeke demanded to know.

"Might have been a meteor shower, maybe a rogue comet," the woman speculated. "I don't know," she admitted.

"Well I for one am thoroughly grateful," Shazza declared. "This beast wasn't meant to land like this, but I think you did a good job."

"Owens did a good job," Mal corrected.

"Huh?" Jack asked, confused.

"He's right," the woman admitted. "Owens was the one that saved you all, not me. I'm just a docking pilot. I did my best, and we're all alive, but it's thanks to Owens. Not me."

"I woke up and heard some of what they were yelling at each other before we crashed," Mal explained to the others, without actually going into detail. "Alright, let's get to work. We're gonna need every pair of hands we can get to make sure we survive out here."

"Not quite every pair of hands," Johns corrected.

"What?" Mal asked.

"Got me a prisoner," Johns explained vaguely.

"Where?" Mal asked. "Still in cryo?"

Johns shook his head. "He slipped that, but he's tied up again. Secure and out of the way, and he's gonna stay that way."

"That certainly sounds reasonable," Paris agreed quickly.