Author: Medley
Recipient: Selena
Rating: G
Fandoms: Crusade and Firefly
Summary: The Vorlons left some of their toys lying around when they left. Set before the movie Serenity and after Ariel; put it where you like in Crusade's run.
"I told you, it's got to be Vorlon technology. And, as much as it pains me to admit it, even I can't read Vorlon." Max sighed and ran his hand through his hair for what had to be the fiftieth time. "Believe me, I want to send these people home as much as you do, Captain, but the Vorlons didn't bother to leave instructions in any of the myriad languages I can read, and I'm not prepared to swear that I can even find the off switch, much less the undo button. Aside from that, who knows how many other universes are accessible through this thing? The next ship that comes through might have really big guns."
He paused, and Gideon could just see him realize that the next ship that came through could have technology that would have IPX salivating, but self-preservation evidently won out and he turned back to the device and the baffling text he'd been studying for hours.
There was, Gideon had to admit to himself, no obvious off switch on the thing. In fact, there were no switches or buttons or anything, just patterns of color that seemed to move when you weren't looking. For all he knew, you had to control the damned thing with your mind, although if that was the case, he was pretty sure the captain of the stranded ship would've returned to his universe through sheer force of will alone.
"Not to seem ungrateful, but is there any chance of us getting back any time soon? It might be hard to get Kaylee and Wash to leave, but Jayne's getting a mite...edgy," the captain in question said.
"Maybe Jayne should be confined somewhere until he's less edgy," Max muttered, not looking up.
"That'd likely make him go past edgy into downright belligerent," said Mal, "And that leads to trouble, more often than not. We'd rather not put your security to any extra work. Best if we were on our way."
"Yes, thank you, I hadn't thought of that. I've just been taking a nap here for the last couple of days but now that you've brought it up, I'll get right on it."
"The trouble with Vorlon script," said Max, not bothering to turn around to see who'd walked up behind him, "Is that if you stare at it long enough, you can almost convince yourself that there's a pattern to it, but it's gone if you blink."
Have you met River yet? Because talking to her is kind of like that."
"I'm almost desperate enough to get her to look at this." Max took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. "I'm almost desperate enough to get Jayne to come down here and kick it a few times."
Trouble'd be getting him to stop at a few," Mal commented.
"True." Max turned back to the Vorlon text. "It's just that there's nothing here that looks like it's about travel, rifts, gateways, or anything like that. I mean, if you build a gateway to another universe, you'd think you'd at least mention it-" He froze. "Unless that's not what it is," he said slowly.
"Could've fooled me," Mal said, but Max wasn't paying attention.
"It could be a side effect. But a side effect of what?"
"If someone goes to all the trouble to send you from one universe to another, I'd say that's what it was meant to do."
"I can swat bugs with this notebook, but that doesn't mean that's what it's for. Max was scanning the text again, rapidly. "Come on," he muttered. "What were you trying to do?"
"I'll just leave you to it, then."
This was by far the biggest ship Mal had ever been on that wasn't built by the Alliance. It was military, though, and Mal had to keep reminding himself that these people in uniform had never been his enemy, and that his brown coat meant nothing to them. Had to keep telling himself that they'd never heard of Serenity Valley, that Serenity Valley might not even exist in this place; the thought was disorienting. The size of the place was disorienting—ships that could travel all the way across the galaxy. That was an awful lot of sky, and sometimes he caught himself thinking that he could stay, get himself a ship that could go faster than Serenity and try to get a little farther from the man who'd seen the angels fly away from Serenity Valley. 'Course, five minutes later he'd be itching to get back to Serenity and home. Never could stay away long.
Even Wash and Kaylee, who at first had gone all moony over the new ship, had recently begun casting longing glances at Serenity sitting there in the Excalibur's enormous shuttle bay.
Wash and Zoe were probably taking advantage of the larger quarters they'd all been given, but he'd heard Kaylee slip onto Serenity last night to sleep. He'd been sleeping there all along, of course.
As soon as the doc's feet had hit the deckplates, he'd been whisked off to the infirmary to be quizzed about plagues. River had gone with him, but she was refusing to let anyone examine her, and Simon hadn't pushed, not once he'd realized their scanning equipment was no better than the hospital on Ariel.
Jayne—well, Jayne hadn't been causing a ruckus, for a change. Mal thought the ship might be wearing on his nerves some, though, and he hoped they'd be home before that became a problem. Book had vanished almost immediately, his imagination caught by the thought of other species out here in the black, and more importantly, the idea that these aliens had written things he could stick his nose into. He had new people to preach to, so Mal figured he was probably happy.
He hadn't seen much of Inara either, not that he'd been looking. He wasn't the least bit worried that she might stay behind when they went home, either.
When, not if. Somebody'd have to figure out how to send them back or he'd know the why of it. The guy who reminded him vaguely of Simon, only older (and mouthier, if that was even possible) had told him in an offhand way that the Vorlons had made the device that brought them all here. Whatever a Vorlon might be. Mal had already decided that if he ever met one, he was going to punch it in the face for doing things to his ship and crew without his say so. If it even had a face, he wasn't sure. He'd punch whatever it had that looked vulnerable, anyway.
Still, Mal figured that if this Maximillian guy was half as smart as he claimed to be, he'd figure it out. Whether he'd figure it out before Jayne got out of hand, that was the question.
Max had a headache. A colossal headache of truly epic proportions. But he was also getting somewhere, and that almost made up for the throbbing behind his eyes. The trick had been to throw out all the other attempts at translation that had been made through the years and start from scratch. He should've known better, really. Yes, it was an insanely complicated language, but that just made it fun. Or it had been fun, until his head started threatening to explode. He checked the time. He checked the date, which explained the headache. Deciding that he'd gone as far as he could on an empty stomach, he went in search of food. Predictably, he found himself surrounded by a significant portion of Serenity's crew once he sat down with his tray.
"I don't know what it's intended to be. A time travel device? A trans-dimensional volleyball net? A Vorlon laundromat?" Max realized that sleep deprivation just might be getting to him, but he continued anyway. "The point is that it does whatever it does automatically at intervals of about 500 years, which is not helpful. But the intervals can be manually changed to something more on the scale of hours. That, you have to admit, is something useful to know."
Mal was thinking about the fact that they'd come to this universe days ago, and idly wondering if Max had slept at all in that time, when his last words sank in.
"So you set it to do its thing every hour or so, and we just take the ship through."
"Basically. The problem is that I don't know how many universes it cycles through. Could be hundreds. Thousands."
"It better not be gorram thousands," growled Jayne from across the table. Mal agreed, but didn't feel the need to say it.
"A thousand universes," said Kaylee brightly. "Imagine that."
"I'll take the one we came from." This from Zoe, while Wash looked wistful, probably thinking of all the things in those thousand universes that could fly.
There was either a conspiracy afoot, or Max was more tired than he thought, because no fewer than three people told him to get some sleep as he made his way back toward the device. The third was the man they called Book, who'd obviously been talking to the rest of Serenity's crew because he pointed out that Max could easily send them to the wrong universe if he was too tired to concentrate.
"Well, I'd never know, would I? You'd still be gone," Max commented, although really, he was too proud to allow such a mistranslation. Still, the guy clearly had some kind of mind powers or something (maybe just a hypnotic voice) because Max found himself just down the hall from his quarters and figured a nap wouldn't hurt.
He dreamed about the device and its patterns, and awoke with a start. Ten minutes later, he was back in front of the thing and an hour after that, he had it.
It still took another five hours to get their uninvited guests home, because Lieutenant Matheson would insist on running a lot of tedious tests. As if he would send them to the wrong universe. Waste of time and equipment, if you asked him, but eventually the Lieutenant was satisfied that there were indeed only gateways to six universes, and that passing through the halo-like energy gateway didn't harm the probes. Also that the order the device cycled through universes wasn't random. Of course it wasn't random; the Vorlons didn't do random, or at least it wasn't random to them. At any rate, eventually even the over-cautious Lieutenant had to admit that it seemed Max knew what he was doing, and Gideon cleared Serenity and all her crew to return to their own universe.
Max stood on Excalibur's bridge watching the ship approach the halo and then disappear. In his last transmission, Mal thanked him for figuring out how to send Serenity home; Max thought of all the toys the Vorlons had left behind and how many patents were waiting to be exploited by a man who could read the language, and smiled. "Always glad to help."