![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
phantismaFandom: Firefly
Title: the bridge is where he'll stay
Charcater: Mal
Rating: PG
Word Count: 662
Summary: Post Serenity, a salvage operation is all it takes to destroy the Alliance.
A/Ns & Warnings: WARNINGS: Character Death (off screen) Written for my second card for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
angst_bingo.
When it was over, however long that may take, there would be few who would be able to tell rightly what happened. There would be rumors and conspiracy theories. There would be them that blamed the Alliance or the Browncoats.
And, if he were to be all manner of philosophical about it he couldn't rightly say they didn't play there parts in the whole affair.
But weren't no one to blame for the end of civilization, no one but him.
He stares out the viewport of the nearly derelict ship and lets himself accept it, lets himself take his place in history as the man that leveled the Alliance with an old storage trunk salvaged off a derelict ship that looked to be as old as earth that was.
Simon had explained it, how the artifacts inside the trunk had been frozen in the tundra, lost to time, untouched by human hands since the ship had crashed and within those artifacts, clothes and toys and art, frozen with them and dormant was the virus.
They found her by accident, way out on the edge of space, laying low and keeping clear while the verse sorted itself out after the whole Miranda mess, her tail sticking up out of a glacier. The Acadia, according to her markings, once a proud vessel bearing families in search of a new life.
Simon had warned him when he brought the trunk on board, but Mal wasn't taking instruction from the good doctor, not on his ship, not when there was money to be made. Memories of earth that was could fetch a mighty fine price, and there was enough in that trunk to auction a piece off on every core planet and then some.
It was weeks before there was anything on the cortex about people getting sick. Months before anyone died. No one could understand how it got so out of control so fast.
But weren't no one alive that had built up a tolerance to a bug from earth that was, and it was mutating and traveling too fast to contain. Three months after the first death on Persephone, more than two thirds of the population was dead and dying.
A month later, Ariel was a graveyard.
There were people who survived, but they were rare, and no one dared rescue them from the cold, dead planets where they huddled alone for fear that the virus would escape again.
One by one the core worlds fell, the virus spreading and mutating despite the Alliance's best efforts to contain it and treat it. Vaccines did nothing. Anti-virus meds did little but make for a slower, more agonizing death.
Six months Serenity didn't set foot planetside in the hopes of surviving. Took on no passengers either, even when they were desperate friends seeking shelter. To let anyone on was to expose themselves again.
Simon passed information with other doctors on other ships and some that were still managing somehow on planets. They traced the source of the virus and all of the first victims, on every planet, had been exposed to one of those artifacts off the Acadia.
He coughs into his hand, pulls the blanket further around him.
There's nothing left. The few people left alive wouldn't live out the year. He's got maybe a day left himself. But he has one last job to do. He slips the recording into the player and sets it to loop as it broadcasts.
"My name is Malcolm Reynolds. I am the captain of the firefly class vessel, Serenity. This planetary system has suffered a catastrophic viral event. The virus is extremely aggressive. Do not proceed to the planet. Do not salvage from the ships in orbit. Do not rescue any survivors."
He pulls both hands in under the blankets and closes his eyes. He could go back to the infirmary or to his bunk. But the bridge is where he belongs. The bridge is where he stays.
Title: the bridge is where he'll stay
Charcater: Mal
Rating: PG
Word Count: 662
Summary: Post Serenity, a salvage operation is all it takes to destroy the Alliance.
A/Ns & Warnings: WARNINGS: Character Death (off screen) Written for my second card for
angst_bingo.When it was over, however long that may take, there would be few who would be able to tell rightly what happened. There would be rumors and conspiracy theories. There would be them that blamed the Alliance or the Browncoats.
And, if he were to be all manner of philosophical about it he couldn't rightly say they didn't play there parts in the whole affair.
But weren't no one to blame for the end of civilization, no one but him.
He stares out the viewport of the nearly derelict ship and lets himself accept it, lets himself take his place in history as the man that leveled the Alliance with an old storage trunk salvaged off a derelict ship that looked to be as old as earth that was.
Simon had explained it, how the artifacts inside the trunk had been frozen in the tundra, lost to time, untouched by human hands since the ship had crashed and within those artifacts, clothes and toys and art, frozen with them and dormant was the virus.
They found her by accident, way out on the edge of space, laying low and keeping clear while the verse sorted itself out after the whole Miranda mess, her tail sticking up out of a glacier. The Acadia, according to her markings, once a proud vessel bearing families in search of a new life.
Simon had warned him when he brought the trunk on board, but Mal wasn't taking instruction from the good doctor, not on his ship, not when there was money to be made. Memories of earth that was could fetch a mighty fine price, and there was enough in that trunk to auction a piece off on every core planet and then some.
It was weeks before there was anything on the cortex about people getting sick. Months before anyone died. No one could understand how it got so out of control so fast.
But weren't no one alive that had built up a tolerance to a bug from earth that was, and it was mutating and traveling too fast to contain. Three months after the first death on Persephone, more than two thirds of the population was dead and dying.
A month later, Ariel was a graveyard.
There were people who survived, but they were rare, and no one dared rescue them from the cold, dead planets where they huddled alone for fear that the virus would escape again.
One by one the core worlds fell, the virus spreading and mutating despite the Alliance's best efforts to contain it and treat it. Vaccines did nothing. Anti-virus meds did little but make for a slower, more agonizing death.
Six months Serenity didn't set foot planetside in the hopes of surviving. Took on no passengers either, even when they were desperate friends seeking shelter. To let anyone on was to expose themselves again.
Simon passed information with other doctors on other ships and some that were still managing somehow on planets. They traced the source of the virus and all of the first victims, on every planet, had been exposed to one of those artifacts off the Acadia.
He coughs into his hand, pulls the blanket further around him.
There's nothing left. The few people left alive wouldn't live out the year. He's got maybe a day left himself. But he has one last job to do. He slips the recording into the player and sets it to loop as it broadcasts.
"My name is Malcolm Reynolds. I am the captain of the firefly class vessel, Serenity. This planetary system has suffered a catastrophic viral event. The virus is extremely aggressive. Do not proceed to the planet. Do not salvage from the ships in orbit. Do not rescue any survivors."
He pulls both hands in under the blankets and closes his eyes. He could go back to the infirmary or to his bunk. But the bridge is where he belongs. The bridge is where he stays.
