Bad news travels fast.

<Snip>
Another shot pinged off the floor a couple of metres from her
"I smegging mean it! Any more of that crap and we start killing people, because
I'm simply not in the mood! It's me: Jones - I need to speak to the Captain!"
"HOLD YOUR FIRE!" Jay shouted, and walked out into the road, down towards
Cassandra. Efof and Jayne followed him on either side.
"You needed to talk to me?" The Captain asked.
<End Snip>
"Captain...I!" Cassandra started. "I'm sorry...for all the trouble I've caused."
"Sorry?!" Snapped Jayne, "You're SORRY?! After what you did you think SORRY
covers it?!"
"JAYNE!" Jay snapped at his clone, "Let's hear her out."
Efof picked his nose.
"Ok. Talk" Jay said, glaring at Cass.
"I was acting under duress." she said solemnly "Le Soutener tortured me, he was
going to kill me!"
"I don't believe this smeg.." Jayne said "Can't you see she's just trying to get
off lightly, now that we've taken back the ship!"
"Are you forgetting what YOU did before, Ensign?" Jay said.
"That's right!" Efof piped in "You were working for an evil army of Jay's clones
and tried to take over the ship! You let loose all those animal hybrids and the
robots! One of them chased me outside the ship!"
"Well..I was..."
"And then you led those horrible dog things" Efof continued "And tried to take
over the ship again and feed us all to the Mollopods! I was nearly a sandwich! I
had Mayo spread all over my forehead and everything!
It was tasty, but noone wanted to try any..."
"Couldn't have put it better myself Efof." Jay said
"I knew that you'd been acting under duress, you were naive and scared and
confused. You wanted to put it right,
and you've proven time and again since then that you're one of the good guys."
Jay then turned to Cassandra.
"Not only did Jayne do some stupid things, but so did I! I blew up the earth in
an alternate timeline for smeg's sake! People hated me for months, years.
Many still don't trust me, but most, realised that I was being controlled by my
counterpart and learned to trust me again."
"So..what are you saying?" Cass asked.
"I'm saying I couldn't throw you in the brig with a clear conciense, without
first giving you a chance to redeem yourself.
We all have to do things we don't want to sometimes. Besides, it was you who
warned me about Le Souteners take-over. It was clear you weren't working for him
intentionally"
"Thank you Captain.."
"That's not to say I'm not smegged off with you though, you caused a lot of
damage to our computer
systems. It's gonna take alot of work for us to undo the damage you did.....,
not to mention install some decent security..
you're free to go, but if you so much as write "boobies" on a calculator in
future you'll be paying a visit to the Brig...are we clear?"
"Crystal.." Cassandra said "Thank you, sir..."
Jay nodded, then lost his footing as the ship shook violently.
<snip 2>
The wormhole pinged closed behind the small fleet of ships, regardless of
whether they wanted to be there or not. Several of the smaller fighters had
been disabled by the nasty buffeting of the dodgy Wormhole, but nothing had been
destroyed, at least.
"Star-charts, find out where we are." Amber said, not seeing the large blue
planet, as she was expecting.
"That looks like Proxima Centuri." Rufus said, gazing through the window. True
enough, the star charts matched up, putting them a good few light-years from
Earth.
"We need the drive on-line... It would take far too long to get to Earth from
here... try and find out what went wrong, pass the message out to everyone."
<End snip 2>
"Amber, Report" Jay said abruptly as he burst into the driveroom.
Amber gave Jay a summary of what was happening.
"Smeg..." Jay said "Cant't we ever catch a break, and will people PLEASE stop
dying?"
As he said this, the drive room doors slid open, and Phil stepped in, only for a
plasma conduit to explode, Star Trek style from a lucky
shot by a Mollopod ship, that burned his face off and killed him instantly.
Noone batted an eyelid. Phil died all the time, he'd find a way out of it
somewhere.
"Anyway." Jay said to Amber after a couple of seconds "Guess that makes you my
second in command, kid."
"Everyone, we need to try to restore the alliance, Seymour called it off in a
fit of rage, like a tool, and we need to fix it. Minimal damage to their ships
only,
target their weapons and propulsion but don't destroy them!"
Everyone in the room started frantically trying to carry out Jay's orders,
except for one ensign, working the comms station.
"Erm, Captain, priority one message from Admiral Sharp"
"On screen."
The admirals face appeared on the large view screen.
"Admiral..not the best time if I'm honest.." Jay said.
"YOUR OFFICE, CAPTAIN - NOW!" snapped the admiral.
Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at Jay.
"...back to work...bridge is yours Keats..."
Amber nodded and began barking orders.
Jay didn't sit down in his office, he had to make a point, he tapped the button
which picked up the held call.
"Admiral, I don't mean to be rude but we're in the middle of a battle here which
we're trying to win without killing anyone..."
"Yes. I'm aware. That's part of the reason why I'm calling. Would you mind
explaining to me how you're crew have managed to kill the Queen of England,
AND end an alliance with a race who are far to dangerous to allow to be
enemies?"
"I have teams looking into that Sir, but right now we're trying to restore
the..."
"It happened because you failed to ensure you're shuttle contingents were
properly maintained! Blue Midgets don't just explode!"
"As I said Admiral, we don't yet know why the Midget exploded, I assure you.."
"I already know why it exploded." Sharp interuppted Jay again. "I've been sent
your maintenence reports showing that you're engineering department
have neglected their duties to maintain the support craft!"
"May I ask who filed that report Sir? Theres no way Amber would fail to make
sure that her ships were up to scratch, she'd drag the
engineers to the shuttle bay herself if she had to."
"That's confidential. But that's not all Captain, I'd like to know why one of
your crew members SHOT the Queen in the first place!"
"Justin Pancake is a known, Hymenoptera sympathiser sir. He doesn't have the
best interests of the Space Corp in mind,
I've brought this to Command's attention on more than one occassion but you have
always failed to act in light of a lack of evidence.
You've prohibited me from firing him without any because of his relationship
with Eckerslike!"
"Stop making excuses!" The admiral spat "Give me one reason why I should believe
someone who is capable of doing THIS?"
The image on screen flicked to the CCTV footage of Seymours quarters, it had
been doctored to make it look as though Jay was
intentionally wrecking the place, any sign of Le Souteners goons had been edited
out, all that remained was footage of Jay wrecking the place.
"THAT NEVER HAPPENED!" Jay protested loud enough for everyone on the drive room
to turn and stare at his closed door.
"Sir, Jayne and I were fighting gangsters that had overrun the ship. This
footage has been edited!"
"Are you saying Ambassador Niples is lying? It was him who sent us this footage,
he wanted to make a formal complaint about you."
"I don't have an explanation Admiral, all i know is that what is on that tape is
NOT what happened!
Seymour hasn't even been back aboard ship since this happened, he can't have
even seen the damage to his quarters yet, someone must have edited the tape,
and sent it to him on the planet. I wouldn't even be surprised if it was
Pancake!"
"Well, rest assured Captain, we will be investigating all of these issues
thoroughly, not to mention your suspected involvement
with Le Soutener. Don't think we don't know that you failed to incarcerate one
of his henchmen a few minutes ago..."
Jay opened his mouth to speak, but was silenced again by the Admiral.
"Captain Chrysler, in light of what I have seen, you are relieved of duty."
"What...but.."
"you heard me, "civilian". YOU'RE FIRED!"
<tag anyone! Amber - looks like you're the skipper! FOR NOW! I'll get it back!
*shakes fist*>