Generations

by Tim Lebbon

  From what he’d heard on the comms, Silas sounded confused and dangerous. River had told him the story of Silas, the legend, and now it seemed that the myth was based on fact. Silas and River were alike and had been formed in the same place. Simon was terrified that if Silas and River met, she would regress back to the scared, vulnerable teenager she’d been when he had first rescued her.

  He would do everything he could to ensure that encounter didn’t happen.

  Having slipped from Serenity and onto this vast, ancient ship, the sense of staggering space and size was humbling. He hurried through endless corridors and hallways, through control rooms and communal spaces, passing countless closed doors that might have held back scenes and stories from half a millennium before. He also passed a few open doors, and he could not shake the sense of curiosity and awe that urged him to push through and take a look beyond. In one room there were several racks of shelving, and on every shelf were several hundred pairs of new sports shoes, petrified now and covered in dust. There was a mass of different colors, styles, and sizes, but all of them appeared new and unworn. He found the scene subtly disturbing, not because they had never been used—although that was haunting enough—but because they had been manufactured, stacked, and stored with a sense of optimism for the future. Many of those transported via the Sun Tzu must have migrated into the ’verse and helped establish humanity as it was today. There was a good chance that he was descended from someone who had traveled on this ship. But none of these shoes had found their purpose.

  A sense of purpose was important to Simon. For a long time River, his méi méi, had been his reason for living, and her safety and well-being would remain his prime raison d’etre for as long as he lived. But life also needed an aim, if not a final destination. Those shoes had sat there for five hundred years, and might remain so for five hundred more. They had become pointless.

  He shook his head. Perhaps it was the sheer size of this vessel, and the impossible task he’d set himself, that had made him maudlin. How would he find his sister in a ship that was more than a mile long? How many rooms did it contain, how many miles of corridor?

  How many dangers?

  Simon paused, head tilted. He thought he’d heard a noise, but it was probably just a stutter from old equipment cycling up for the first time in an age. The diffused light from ceiling panels seemed to warm his skin. He knew it was a psychological effect. The air inside the Sun Tzu was below freezing, and he already felt ice forming on his eyelashes and stubble. He’d heard Mal and the others on the comms stating that life-support systems had been kick-started when Silas had woken, but it would take some time to warm the whole ship. The dead had no need of such basic comforts.

  As he continued, he heard the sound again. It was an echo, fading around him as if a last distant breath. Even so far away, he recognized the sound of gunfire.

  The Alliance are on board already! Before he’d left the bridge he’d seen the trace of an approaching Alliance destroyer on the scopes, and then he’d heard Wash telling Mal and the others that combat shuttles were incoming. He hadn’t been keeping a good track of time, but it seemed that the Alliance had a sense of urgency about what was happening on board the Sun Tzu.

  Of course they did. They knew about Silas because they had made him what he was, long before they had done the same to River. They had placed him here, out of the way and safe in some form of suspension device. The tales River had once told him said that he had been a much earlier experiment, something imperfect, a trial subject when River had been more refined, benefiting from the mistakes they had made when they had been messing with Silas’s brain. But it seemed those mistakes had made Silas more deadly than even the Alliance could ever have dreamed.

  He headed toward the sound, and it grew louder the further he went. Echoes overlaid echoes, a constant low-level grumble that carried the promise of terrible things. He hoped River wasn’t involved. He also hoped the crew weren’t entangled in the violence, but he felt a sinking dread, and a certainty that they must be. He started to run, not knowing what to do when he got there, only knowing that he had to find River.

  He hurried across a suspended walkway, sprinted along a wide, low corridor, and around the next corner he saw two tall women emerge from a wide, arched opening. He was far too late to hide from them.

  They looked right at him. Simon cried out in shock, stumbled, and went sprawling, hands out to take most of the impact, and he slid to a stop.

  No no no! he thought, but he was not imagining this, and it was no nightmare. He wished it was. The pair of these monsters who had almost captured them on Ariel were a trillion miles away, and he’d hoped they were the only ones. His hope withered and died as he saw the two women, and his heart stuttered, and he thought the shock and fear would be enough to do him in. He wanted to stand, turn, and run.

  One of the figures raised her blue-gloved hand toward him, holding a thin, narrow implement.

  Simon felt the first terrible probing in his ears and eyes. A pressure on his ear drums, a constriction at his throat, and then his eyeballs felt bloated and throbbing, like the worst hangover he’d ever had, growing harder, hotter, swelling within their sockets and threatening to burst.

  “I can…” he croaked, and he clawed at his throat because the words would not come.

  The second figure stepped forward. In one hand she carried a metal and glass object, but her other hand was free. She reached for him as if to stroke a fallen pet, but she never quite touched him. He saw nothing in her eyes. No expression at all. On his hands and knees, level with her legs, he saw spatters of blood on her shoes and trousers.

  His head pulsed and pounded, and he felt the first warm, wet dribble of blood from his right ear.

  I can’t leave River like this! he thought, and then his last chance at survival screamed at him, a terrible risk and yet the only way he might yet make it through to help her, save her. Because though she was powerful, he was the steady rock around which she lived her life. He pinned his sister to the world, and if he died here and now she would be set free to drift and be caught up in the storms that existence continued to throw at them all. If they knew who he was, and that River was there, perhaps they could combine forces to bring Silas under the Alliance twins’ control.

  “I know… River … Tam,” he said.

  The first figure lowered her hand, and as soon as the object pointed away from him at the floor he felt a lifting of the pressure inside. It brought such a rush of relief that he fell onto his stomach and cried out, tears and blood spattering the floor before his face.

  “What about River Tam?” one of the twins asked.

  “I’m her brother,” Simon said. “She’s here. Together… we can help you put… put Silas down.”

  “We’ve already put him down, long ago,” they said. “He just needs… reminding.”

  “He will listen to River.”

  He saw a shadow of expression on their faces for the first time. Their surprise gave him a brief pang of satisfaction, but he could never, ever forget who these people were—if they were even people at all, and he’d always had his doubts—and what he was dealing with. They were surprised at what he knew about Silas, and that River was here, and most of all at his offer of help.

  Their faces quickly became blank again, implacable, cold. The Hands of Blue would never betray any sense of weakness.

  “Talk,” they said.

  * * *

  When Kaylee and Jayne reached a series of viewing platforms and bubbles along the side of the Sun Tzu, she hoped the vast sense of scale, and of being lost deep within the belly of a giant beast, would fade away. It did not. If anything, seeing out into deep space while also aware of the huge, dead ship they were currently lost and trapped within gave her an even greater sense of hopelessness. Yet it was beautiful too, and it meant that they were hopefully one step closer to escape.

  I’m in a mausoleum, she thought, and then she saw the hulking mass of the Alliance destroyer
and gasped out loud. Jayne’s reaction was similar. The viewing port was high and long, the platform they’d emerged onto set with dozens of low-back reclining chairs for people to sit in and gaze upon the wonders of deep space. Every chair was empty. They were the only two here, but they did not feel alone.

  The destroyer was settled against the Sun Tzu further toward its stern, a forbidding gray mass that blocked out her view of the stars in that direction. Even though it was still dwarfed by the Sun Tzu, it still seemed to lure her closer with its terrible gravity. She was looking at its tail end, its drive a low, glowing yellow in repose, its hull busy with gun emplacements and docking arms for combat shuttles and attack ships. Most of these docking arms were empty after releasing their shuttles to ferry troops across the small distance to the Sun Tzu.

  She had already witnessed what had become of some of those troops. She felt almost sad for them.

  “Will you look at that,” Jayne said.

  “Not a pretty picture.”

  “Huh?”

  Kaylee glanced to Jayne and saw that he wasn’t looking out at the Alliance ship at all. His attention had been grabbed by something inside the viewing area, past the recliners and set against the far wall. She followed his gaze.

  “Jayne, I can’t believe you.”

  “But we’re here now, so why not?”

  “Why not? Because you can hardly carry what you’ve already collected, especially in these bulky gorramn suits. Because we have to escape, survive, and get back to the ship to help Wash. And because that man Silas is far from human, and I think he’s more dangerous to us than all the soldiers and spaceships the Alliance can throw at us.”

  “I agree,” Jayne said. “But he ain’t here. And if we’re nowhere near where he is, I’m free to indulge my natural desire to ensure this trip isn’t the total hump-up it’s quickly becoming.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  “Believe it.” Jayne stalked away toward the drinks station, and by the time Kaylee had joined him he’d already selected several bottles and placed them on the bar. She picked up one and shook it.

  “It’s open.”

  “So?”

  “So… it’s been open for half a millennium. You think what’s left in here will be good?”

  Jayne snatched the bottle from her and twisted off the lid. He examined the label, raised his eyebrows, nodded in admiration, and took a swig.

  Kaylee had time to step back and to the side before Jayne spat the drink out in a fine spray. He wiped his mouth and looked at the bottle again, as if the label were to blame for the foul taste rather than his own stupidity.

  “Even the sealed ones might be ruined,” Kaylee said.

  “I thought wine was supposed to mature with age.”

  “Like you?”

  Jayne looked hurt. Kaylee smiled and shook her head, amazed that she was able to find humor in such a dire circumstance.

  “These two are wine,” she said, tapping the tall, slender bottle. “This is brandy. This is whiskey, and by the looks of it…” She leaned forward to examine the label.

  “Scotch,” he said. “Single malt. Saw a bottle of that go for a thousand credits once. Guy who bought it said he’d never open it. You ask me, he was a fèi fèi de pi yăn.”

  Jayne took up the bottle, tested the lid, then opened it with a hard twist. He sniffed the open neck, took a swig, smacked his lips, and sighed.

  “But it’s worth a fortune!” Kaylee said.

  “This ship’s still full of stuff, and I need a drink.” As he offered the bottle to Kaylee he looked past her and up toward the overhead viewing window.

  Kaylee took a sip of the Scotch. When she swallowed it burned all the way down, and settling in her stomach it spread a heat through her core. She took a larger swallow and closed her eyes, and the combination of sensory inputs—taste, scent, touch—inspired a clear memory of a time not so long ago when the crew were all together. They were seated around the galley table, Jayne and Book chatting and laughing, Simon and River quiet and watchful, Inara and the captain pointedly ignoring each other after some argument or other. Kaylee had looked around the table and realized that these were her people and her family, and the power of that memory almost brought a tear to her eye.

  “You know we gotta go out there,” Jayne said. She opened her eyes again and he nodded past her at the window. “Find an openin’ if we can. Or if we can’t, you’ll have to close some blast doors, seal off an area, and I’ve got stuff in my kit that’ll blast one of those windows out. Maybe we do it here.” He looked around the large area.

  “Any decompression will attract the Alliance,” Kaylee said.

  Jayne nodded as he continued to examine bottles from behind the bar. Any that were open he set aside, and most of the full bottles joined them. When he had six or seven placed on the bar before him, he turned to Kaylee.

  “The Alliance are comin’ in,” he said. “What we saw back there, that was just the beginning, and Wash is gonna need us. You know he ain’t a fighter.” He looked contemplative. “Might talk the Alliance troopers on board Serenity to death, I suppose.”

  “I ain’t a fighter, neither.”

  “I can take care of that.”

  “Are you really gonna—?”

  Jayne held up his hand and tilted his head. Kaylee listened too, and she heard the sound of distant voices, low and secretive. Accompanying them were the echoes of footfalls on metal.

  Jayne made an obscene gesture and she knew immediately what he meant: Alliance.

  He grabbed the bottles he’d chosen and put them carefully into a stuffed backpack, slung it over his shoulder, then picked up his second pack. He pulled his gun and tried to shoulder the pack, but Kaylee grabbed it from him. She didn’t want the encumbrance, but she’d much rather have Jayne with a free gun hand.

  He pointed toward a darkened doorway at the far end of the viewing area.

  “So we’re not gonna blast the window?” she whispered, leaning in close.

  “Not unless we have to. If they’re gettin’ in somewhere close, maybe we can get out the same way.”

  Jayne approached the door and found it nonfunctional. He raised an eyebrow at Kaylee and she was already there, digging out her tool pack and getting to work. Though lacking in modern refinements, there was a comforting honesty in the tangle of colored electrics, distribution boards, and mechanical switches. Unlike some modern laser-based controls, these structural components would take a lot longer than a few hundred years to degrade and fall apart. They also took longer for her to pick.

  After a couple of minutes the door whispered open and Kaylee eased back, allowing Jayne to slip through first. The next area was similar to the one they had just left, with several large viewing domes in the ceiling shedding starlight over the scene, a score of comfortable chairs scattered around the edges, and large, low tables at the room’s center. The walls were lined with books, floor to ceiling, almost all the way around. There must have been thousands of them.

  “I’ve never seen so many books!” Kaylee said, keeping her voice low. She could still hear voices and movement from beyond the room, carried through to them via strange acoustics. Maybe the large areas of glass caught and directed any sound.

  Jayne rubbed his fingers together and shrugged.

  “Probably priceless,” she said, and she saw his eyes light up. She hadn’t meant it that way, but she couldn’t be bothered telling him. Way across at the other end of the room was an open doorway, and beyond they saw a wide metal stairwell. A flash of movement made Kaylee catch her breath. She dropped, Jayne already on the floor beside her, and they both became motionless. She looked left and right without moving her head. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, not without risking being seen. They watched a line of Alliance soldiers passing by the open doorway, heading down the staircase beyond with soft, dull footsteps.

  If one of them turned and looked into the room, they couldn’t help but see Jayne and Kaylee crouching down.
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br />   None of them did.

  They’re not looking for us, Kaylee thought. They’re not interested in the ship or what it carries, cos they already know all about it. They’re only interested in him.

  After the last soldier passed they waited for a while, listening to the soft echoes retreating.

  “Might sound foolish, but could be we’re safer out there than here in the ship,” Jayne said. “Come on.” As they crossed the remainder of the library Kaylee glanced around at the books, fascinated and excited for differing reasons. Quite a few of the tomes had fallen from the shelves and lay on the bare floor like tumbled leaves, and some were open, exposing pages that might never be read again. Kaylee wondered what treasures they contained—accounts of times and places on Earth-That-Was, pictures, names and faces of people long-since gone and from a history that informed everything and everywhere humanity was today. This was a treasure trove of knowledge, and she wished Inara or Book were here to see it.

  Jayne saw the books as money, and he picked up a few and tried to read their spines before placing them quietly back on the floor, unsure what might make them valuable. And with his loaded backpacks, Jayne could carry no more.

  He moved to the open doorway, looked down, and pressed his finger to his lips. Kaylee looked up, not down, and she could already see a hopeful sign. Just four flights and two landings above them, a heavy set of blast doors stood open. She could make out a blinking green light beside them, as if they had recently been activated.

  They ducked back through the doorway.

  She stood on tiptoes and whispered into Jayne’s ear. “Airlock. We must be right under the destroyer’s stern here.”

  “Could be they’ve set up an umbilicus to cross.”

  “Doubt it,” Kaylee said. “Those soldiers are suited ’n’ booted for a space walk. I’d lay a bet that we’ll be able to get out and walk along the Sun Tzu’s hull.”

  “With that big ugly destroyer hanging above us.”

  “Either that, or we try to get past ’em.” She nodded at the doorway leading to the stairwell.