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Jul. 10th, 2005 08:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flybywashCallisto had been baking with the promise of a hot and frankly miserable day of combing the dumps. Within twenty minutes of stamping through bits of broken metal, Wash's neck and the tips of his ears had turned bright red; nobody born on Tellus after 2450 had enough melanin in their skin to start with, and living on ships for over a decade hadn't done much to help things. So, sure, he was used to the sunburns. That didn't mean coming back to the ship looking like some weird six-foot-tall piece of cooked seafood ever topped his Best Ways To Spend a Day Dirtside Ever list.
(....Well, sometimes it did if Zoe helped him out with the burn cream afterwards.)
He'd been tempted to give up and tell Kaylee they should try the next dump over when he'd tripped over the first big find: a flight simulator's console. It was rusted in spots, cracked in others, but one look told him it was still more or less worthy. Grinning, Wash had hunkered down in the shade of a rotted-out shuttle and gotten to work scraping it out of the dirt. No array he could see, nor a chair or the proper hydraulics to match, but they couldn't be too far away --
He'd been so preoccupied with getting it out and loaded onto the mule that he almost didn't hear Kaylee's triumphant shout a dozen yards ahead. When he'd popped his head up to look, she was kicking aside the dirt from around a cluster of shields.
There were ten of them, just enough to cover Serenity (it would have been nice to have another ten, but they'd make do): flat black discs as wide around as his hand, branded as being for a Raptor 19720-2M8 short-range military skimmer. In perfect condition from the looks of it, no less. She'd beamed her light-up-the-'verse smile at him as she handed them over, and, after another forty-five minutes and Wash's own triumphant discovery of the broken simulator's holographic array, they were rumbling back onto the ship.
Final score, Wash thought with a smug smile as he gunned the mule up Serenity's ramp, sneaky interplanetary criminals: two, Alliance municipal scrapyards: zero.
As much as he wanted to start trying to piece together the simulator first, once they broke atmo and were on course, he retrieved the shields and jogged to the kitchen to see what he could do. Wouldn't take long, he figured as he sat down and used the edge of a butter knife to pry the first one open. Just take a look at the workings, maybe make a few modifications to the programming to ensure they'd cover Serenity's signature well enough to --
"Eugh!"
He dropped it with a clatter like it had sprouted legs and tried to gnaw off his fingers. Which...it pretty much had.
Reams of grit and dozens of tiny insects were pouring out of the casing. Immediately, Wash seized a dinner mat and slammed it down on top of the mess. A reluctant peek underneath revealed a few of them still squirming feebly, but a couple more whacks took care of it.
"Okay, that was disgusting," he said calmly, lifting the mat again and eyeing the squashed bugs dotting its underside.
The other nine shields he opened over the sink, and all of them produced the same highly creepy results. Muttering something about how a bunch of electronics should not make that good a breeding ground for tiny multi-legged animals, Wash switched on the faucet and let it run as he tossed the shields in the trash compactor.
For a minute, he stayed slumped against the counter, thinking.
Then he sighed and turned back to the bridge.
He still had that diamond Harper had given him; looked like it was time to go to Plan B.
(....Well, sometimes it did if Zoe helped him out with the burn cream afterwards.)
He'd been tempted to give up and tell Kaylee they should try the next dump over when he'd tripped over the first big find: a flight simulator's console. It was rusted in spots, cracked in others, but one look told him it was still more or less worthy. Grinning, Wash had hunkered down in the shade of a rotted-out shuttle and gotten to work scraping it out of the dirt. No array he could see, nor a chair or the proper hydraulics to match, but they couldn't be too far away --
He'd been so preoccupied with getting it out and loaded onto the mule that he almost didn't hear Kaylee's triumphant shout a dozen yards ahead. When he'd popped his head up to look, she was kicking aside the dirt from around a cluster of shields.
There were ten of them, just enough to cover Serenity (it would have been nice to have another ten, but they'd make do): flat black discs as wide around as his hand, branded as being for a Raptor 19720-2M8 short-range military skimmer. In perfect condition from the looks of it, no less. She'd beamed her light-up-the-'verse smile at him as she handed them over, and, after another forty-five minutes and Wash's own triumphant discovery of the broken simulator's holographic array, they were rumbling back onto the ship.
Final score, Wash thought with a smug smile as he gunned the mule up Serenity's ramp, sneaky interplanetary criminals: two, Alliance municipal scrapyards: zero.
As much as he wanted to start trying to piece together the simulator first, once they broke atmo and were on course, he retrieved the shields and jogged to the kitchen to see what he could do. Wouldn't take long, he figured as he sat down and used the edge of a butter knife to pry the first one open. Just take a look at the workings, maybe make a few modifications to the programming to ensure they'd cover Serenity's signature well enough to --
"Eugh!"
He dropped it with a clatter like it had sprouted legs and tried to gnaw off his fingers. Which...it pretty much had.
Reams of grit and dozens of tiny insects were pouring out of the casing. Immediately, Wash seized a dinner mat and slammed it down on top of the mess. A reluctant peek underneath revealed a few of them still squirming feebly, but a couple more whacks took care of it.
"Okay, that was disgusting," he said calmly, lifting the mat again and eyeing the squashed bugs dotting its underside.
The other nine shields he opened over the sink, and all of them produced the same highly creepy results. Muttering something about how a bunch of electronics should not make that good a breeding ground for tiny multi-legged animals, Wash switched on the faucet and let it run as he tossed the shields in the trash compactor.
For a minute, he stayed slumped against the counter, thinking.
Then he sighed and turned back to the bridge.
He still had that diamond Harper had given him; looked like it was time to go to Plan B.
