[center][h2]Free From the Zoo[/h2][/center]

OOC:  JP collaboration with [@wanderingwolf] and [@sail3695]  
     
The China Doll’s atmo engines roared as it idled into a hovering maneuver, settling into the broad dirt patch adjacent to the prison’s entrance. As strut legs extended from the belly, the nose angled skyward to set its cargo bay door precisely before the burly man who stood swallowed in the background of gray that was the prison complex. Making firm contact with the ground, the Firefly’s cargo bay door gave way almost immediately to reveal Captain Cal Strand, his duster whipping around him as the engines continued to cycle. By the way he remained on the ramp and the engines maintaining their pace, it was clear that the ship wasn’t staying put, and he better hop to if he was going to make it aboard. 

Boone squinted for only a moment as the wind and dust settled, sizing up the man on the ramp as if the two were back in the prison yard – immediately, Boone could see he didn’t have the look about him to be the man who fetched the captain’s new recruits or hauled rigging. There was an air of confidence to his stance, like a guard or gang leader might have, and almost instantly, Boone realized there was only one person he could have been. Boone made his way up the ramp cautiously, stopping short of the man and extending his hand in greeting, holding his parcel under his spare arm.

“Mr. Cal Strand?”

“Len Boone?” Cal called over the rushing wind. As he approached, Strand got a good look at Boone. The man was a boulder, from the tattoos on his face to the solid tree-trunks extending from his shoulders he might call arms; this man embodied ex-con. When he opened his mouth, the shine of silver was cut by the absence of a single front tooth.

Cal met the man’s rough hand with his own, though a moment later it dawned on him that Len’s right pinky finger was a stump down to the second knuckle. Cal gave a firm shake of that mitt, eyes measuring Boone’s response,  “Welcome aboard the China Doll.”

“Thank you, sir. Just Boone’ll do.”

The captain’s hand was far less light in Boone’s paw of a hand than the warden’s, with a roughness Boone felt oddly thankful for as he turned to meet the girl at the captain’s side. It wasn’t the first time he had seen a woman since he had been locked up – there had been doctors and nurses and even the rare, few female guards over the years – but certainly the first time he had seen a [i]young[/i] woman. He couldn’t remember a frame of reference for how old she must have been – thirteen? Fourteen? She had an age to her eyes that complicated even the most basic estimation.

“Good morning, dear.” He turned back to the captain with a silvery smile, “Your daughter?”


The Captain cracked a smirk as Abby hit the button to retract the hydraulics of the Firefly Class three’s cargo bay doors. The young woman had a perplexed and incredulous look on her face, owing chiefly to her raised eyebrows and pursed lips. She gave a quick wag of her chin.

“This one’s a load of trouble, but I got no claim on her antics. Abigail! This here is Boone, the new pilot. Say hullo.” 

Back ‘o’ her mind said somethin’ bout it bein’ impolite tah stare, but she reckoned if a body come face tah face with a tiger broke free from tha zoo, manners din’ always stand.  Fer now, she gaped at this man, eyes wide an’ mouth open.  “Howdy,” was tha only word come tah mind as tha barest whisper.

Strand nodded, “See, picture o’ proper.” With the doors hissing closed, the roar outside was reduced to a hum of the atmo engines. The cargo bay itself was largely bare, with a few crates strapped in the far corner, opposite the mule which Elias had been tinkering with to try and rectify the error in Cal’s impulse purchase. A shiny row of tools lay in a lashed down, magnetized toolbox. Ahead of Boone, a sitting area opened up to the empty medbay, whose lights were decidedly off in the wake of losing their last medic on Pelorum. Boone could spy a passage that led off to the right, which housed the China Doll’s passenger berths. As a general rule, the ship was tidy and everything was in working order – and spick and span – thanks to the very same young woman who had eloquently greeted Boone at the base of the cargo ramp.

Boone’s large frame seemed almost comical as they made their way through the quarters, causing him to bang into every doorway as he trailed the captain, catching on every beam he passed like some giant, lost schoolboy on the first day of class. 


“Let’s get you situated. Follow me.” Cal made for the scaffold stairs that led the pair up to the second level of the bay and toward the galley. The commissary was host to a couple of crew seated at the shared table, both nursing cups of tea.

“Sister. Edina,” Cal said, nodding at the pair as he paraded through the galley with Boone in tow. Edina and Sister Lyen’s eyes widened as they spied the new pilot – from his hulking mass to the tattoos that covered nearly every visible inch of his body. Wordlessly, they both lifted their cups to their faces, interrogating their tea in earnest as the Captain and the pilot passed through to the bridge.

Edina’s cup, held in a death grip by both hands, still trembled enough to set het tea dancing and leaping over the rim.  [i]Teardrops[/i] her mind recoiled from the vision and the memories invoked. The simple porcelain clattered and rang as she touched down for a shaky landing into her saucer.  Both hands now set to work, pressing a napkin into the puddles of spilt tea as if she were containing a flood.  She knew, from a life lived around seagoing boats, that the Captain’s word was uncompromising law…but she’d also lived her life in the orbits of men who celebrated their crimes by decorating their skin.  Still, it wasn’t her place to run off at the mouth.  Captain had made a call.  As his crew, she was bound to go along.  

Sister Lyen was watching her.  Edina realized her mocha skinned hands had gone pale from the way she pressed that napkin into the tabletop.  After hastily withdrawing them to hide upon her lap, she offered up the only right sounding words she could muster.

“We’re gonna need a bigger pantry.”



The cockpit of the China Doll was a modest space, with a pilot and co-pilot chair, with twin consoles and an overhead control panel shared between them. Ahead, at the nose of the ship, a cargo space stepped down into secondary holding for equipment and supplies. Invisible from their current spot, a black box hummed from its integrated hookups in the bridge, below their feet. The viewport opened up to the wide, verdant land of Urvasi’s mills and recovering agricultural enterprises. 

Boone gazed at the viewport in awe, brushing his hand over his bald head with an open-mouthed silvery smile. Urvasi was sprawling and bucolic from their elevated viewpoint, but certainly no Pelorum – huge, valley-sized craters dotted the landscape, cleaving chunks of hillside and forest into bare plains. Scatterings of mill-towns connected to one another by thin arteries of dirt roads, each with only a few sleepy carriages moving along. By the look on his face, you could have sworn it was the first time the man had seen trees.


Seated in the pilot’s chair on the right, Yuri, the first mate, locked the steering column and nodded to greet Boone, still marveling at the viewport, with a hint of that selfsame surprise present on Edina and Sister Lyen’s features. “This here is Yuri, my first mate. Anything he tells you to do, you do it like I was the one what said it. Have a seat.” Cal gestured to the pilot’s chair.

“Afternoon, Mr. Yuri.” Boone said with a smile, nodding to the co-pilot as he eyed the pilot chair up and down, giving the captain and co-pilot a glance as he put down his parcel and began making his way into the seat.

“Mr. Boone.”  The mate rose from his perch at the console to make way, though considering the sheer bulk of this man, he had some misgivings about just where he might make way to.  As he brushed past, one of the prisoner’s numerous tattoos,  [i][b]CUTTHROAT[/b][/i], screamed out from above the collar of a plain grey prison-issue shirt.  [i]A description?[/i] Yuri wondered, [i]or maybe an instruction?[/i]

Having only been able to stand upright in the cockpit by either hunching his shoulders or bending his knees, If he had seemed almost comical when he walked, however, it was downright vaudevillian to see him squeeze into the pilot’s seat, an affair that took and ended with Boone’s knees halfway up to his chest, the steering yoke swallowed up in his mitt of a hand.

While the man situated himself, Cal crossed his arms in thought. “So, you ever flown a Firefly before?” The Captain’s eyes leveled with Boone’s. It was a task to take the measure of a man from just a few words and a handshake, but Cal liked to think he had knack for telling ripe from rotten. In his estimation, from the way Boone carried himself – knocking into near every causeway on the boat – and how he greeted Abigail – all “P’s” and “Q’s” like – the mystery of the man was only deepening. For all the posturing those tattoos and that face made, Cal reckoned that’s just what it was, because the crazy look in a man’s eyes what usually inked himself up like this fella, was strikingly absent from the man before him.

“Oh, yes sir, captain. Every make and model, from those barebones Series 1’s without the berths to those big, mean, mother-lovin’ double-wide Series 4’s.” Boone said excitedly, trying to shift the bulk of his frame in the chair to face the captain. “I’ve flown all sorts of starships, Arrowhead Light Runners to Zephyr Mega-Haulers. I’ve even flown the [i]long haul[/i].” He said, dropping his voice to near-above a whisper for his last mention. “Meteor showers, ion clouds, you name it. Every kinda simulation the machines can throw at you –” 


“Hold on, did I hear that right? Every kinda simulation?” Cal ground his teeth as he considered the implications this news carried.

“Oh, of course, Mr. Cal. They don’t let the double-reds eat soup with a spoon, nevermind letting us jump into a starship.” He said with a giggle, raising his arms to show the captain his only two colored tattoos – two decidedly clearer, more cleanly-done red bars around his wrists.

 “I think all the blues are allowed to drive mules for work, up to the double greens, or maybe the single yellows. They don’t really mix the reds up too much with the others.” Boone looked at Yuri, and then back to Cal, catching up with Cal’s slowly-dawning realizations.

“I promise you, Mr. Cal, Ol’ Boone’ll get you where you need to go. I don’t know what they told you about me, but there’s twenty years of flying in there too. I promise you, Mr. Cal, twenty years is a long time. A long, [i]long[/i] time.” Boone’s face shifted into a stark solemnity for the first time since Cal had seen him.

And there was the catch. They’d flown halfway to Highwater for a pilot who’d been sittin’ in a box for twenty years. Even with a contract won, the Captain could cut his losses. He scratched his chin, considering. The engines still roared outside the China Doll as he muddled on the subject, but he didn’t have to muddle long before a feminine, Old-Earth-Bostonian voice filled the bridge.

“He’s right, Cal. Twenty years of completing simulations on the model K-3000 Meta-SIM–the ones housed in this Penal Colony–exceeds the criteria to pilot a Firefly class 3 ship by more than one-hundred and seventy-eight times. If anything, Mr. Len Boone is overqualified.”

Cal cleared his throat as the disembodied voice ceased. “Twenty years of flyin’ inside can’t prepare a body for everythin’--”

“Twenty years of flying outside won’t do that either.”

The Captain arched a brow at his first mate, “Aye, she’s got a point. Boone, meet S.A.M.N.T.H.A. We call her Sam. Seems like she’s taken a shine to you, already.”

“Pleased to meet you,” came the cool-toned greeting from the AI, emanating from the speaker in the bulkhead to his right.

”The pleasure’s all mine, dear. I’m much obliged for your input, I do believe it might have saved me my job.” Boone said, still looking at the captain, his face having returned to his regular, warm smile. This was not the first disembodied voice Boone had encountered, though he could already tell he would like this one a lot more. He gripped the familiar yoke in his hand, turning back to the viewport with a strange, wide-eyed expression. Boone had taken off tens of thousands of times in ships of all shapes and sizes, and here he was, readying himself for his first take-off, starting to sweat like a rookie.

Yuri tried not to stare at the cartoonish vision of the giant hunching himself into the pilot’s seat.  Casting aside his musings over whether or not Boone’s twenty years’ simulation included flying like a man doubled over with Montezuma’s Revenge,  the first mate shared a private [i]I-hope-you-know-what-the-gorram-hell-you’re-doing[/i] glance with his captain.   “The prison green lighted our departure corridor.  Heading and vectors are all laid in. The boat’s ready when you are, Cap’n.”