Chapter 1

Might've seemed a shiny idea to the fellow came up with it, to have one of the more lurid channel feeds from the cortex projected onto the ceiling - gave everyone an uninterrupted view and all while taking up minimal space - but it was a hell of a pain in the neck after more than half an hour in the bar. It strobed on the edge of vision, reflected off the glasses and off the polished ebony-black of the table surfaces, made its presence felt as a constant flicker of light and sound in the darkened bar. He'd had headache enough to begin with.

Mal hated Athena Station. Have to travel a long way to find a more garishly synthetic place. Existing under the pretence of being on the more hardened edge of life out on the rim while it catered to those well enough off as to be giving a damn about tasting a bit of that image for kicks, it squatted out by Ariadne on the route from Boros, a sprawling collection of bars, clubs, hotels and gambling dens used by some as a stopover and some as a gorram resort. But for whatever inexplicable reason, Zoe liked it and Kaylee liked it and Jayne liked it, and that made for two counts of him pushing trouble if he slipped it by on a run that passed within an hour of the glitzy eyesore.

Still, they could all use a break, and docking charges were waived courtesy of the establishments who made more money - in extortionate amounts - off roping their clientele inside to spend. So he'd allowed they could set themselves to 'overnight' there.

Jayne, who mainly liked it on account of the drinking, same reason for him liking every bar and waystation they happened upon, had solved the problem of the ongoing crick in the neck by sprawling flat over a pair of seats and watching on his back. 'Course, that made drinking a problem of its own, but Jayne didn't seem to have much mind for that judging by the stains already on his T-shirt. Zoe and Wash seemed to bask in the opportunity of being a couple, 'mid the light and noise and carnival atmosphere, sitting aside together at the next table along. That left himself to the mercy of Kaylee, 'cause apparently captains didn't get the same option to stay at home in the quiet like preachers, doctors, crazy girls and non-practicing whores.

"Know you don't like it here, cap'n, but don't you think it's awful pretty? Look at the way the lights all reflect," Kaylee tried, leaning over a full drink almost bigger'n she was to sip off the top of it, trying not to get a paper parasol up her nose in the bargain.

"Busy thinkin' for the most part on my headache," Mal retorted, edging down a mite further in his seat and watching a Blue Sun logo flash its reflection in the surface of the table. "And best make the most of that pail of orange sludge, 'cause I ain't stretching to another of what that cost."

"You ain't no fun at all, cap'n," she laughed. Drew moisture rings in the surface of the table with the base of her glass, and managed to find some kind of rhythm somewhere in the blare of noise to bounce her head and shoulders along to.

"Seems to be the majority claim, and I can't say I'm one for contesting the issue."

She reached over to plant him a sound slap on the arm. "Ain't true. Admit it, you wanna cut loose an' have some fun, just like any of the rest of us... well, 'cept Simon, apparently. You're just tense 'cause of Inara and everything. You need to loosen up."

"Yeah." Jayne surged up over-quick and slammed his empty glass down on the table in front of Mal, who eyed it unsympathetically. "You need to get another drink, Mal. Work off that tension." He swayed on the stool, looking a mite wall-eyed - not drunk, on account of the fact none of them had the funds to get drunk on this joint's prices.

"I am not tense..." Mal began sharply, and faltered, clearing his throat in the face of two disbelieving expressions. "I am mourning my hopes for anything resembling a quiet drink in this gaudy nuthouse." He glared at Jayne. "Not throwing no more money away on this overpriced goat's piss. You want it, you got paid a perfectly decent cut from Sir Warwick's cows, and who'd I be to stop you tossing what you got left of it down the waste compressor?"

"Gorram it, Mal," Jayne griped. "Kaylee's right. You been grumpier'n hell since we left Persephone."

"Well, now, I don't never recall that good mood I was in had me subsidising your incapacitating yourself by way of overpriced beverages best fit to sterilise crockery."

Jayne bit short a curse and stomped off up to the bar, practising his intimidating sneer on anyone got too close to being in his way. Mal followed his progress - easy enough by the aisle of space he cleared 'round him. As Jayne unconcernedly jumped the queue, his eyes wandered to a couple of tables in the corner beyond the bar, proven unpopular due to the older model air recycling unit up on the wall close by, as the things tended to belch out a chilly breeze. The sparsity of crowd in that corner afforded him a clear view of the group seated around one of the nearer tables. A profile caught his eye... two... a third. He squinted, inwardly damning the fluctuating light.

"Cap'n?" Kaylee's voice broke in, speaking quite loud. Maybe she'd said something already he'd gone and missed.

He stood, scraping his stool back, hand drifting down to check the pistol at his hip, and his eyes not leaving that bushel of folk in the corner.

"What is it?" Kaylee asked, her concern ringing through clear. She started to get up and he set his hand on her shoulder; gently pushed her back down.

"Just some people over there I'd be needing to exchange a few words with," he told her calmly. "You, little Kaylee, can stay right here and finish your drink." He stepped around her stool and was not unaware of how behind him she got up and took herself over to Wash and Zoe, interrupting their husband-and-wifely canoodling to deliver a fast-whispered call to arms. Mal consciously slowed his steps some, giving Zoe opportunity to come up closer on his back, but anger still carried him onward, and he was barely aware of how the closing aisle that had opened for Jayne sprung elastically back into being to accommodate his passage. Strode past the oblivious Jayne leaned arguing at the bar with a fistful of its attendant's shirt and emerged into draughty space where the ambient noise was overshadowed by the din of the recycler's blast.

"'Scuse me." Planted his hand on a shoulder hard with tight muscle and sparse flesh covering the bone, and dragged its owner around in his seat; made good and sure the face - surprised, annoyed, mouth halted partway through speech - was the same as he remembered before he hauled back and landed his fist firmly in the middle of it.

The fellow went down hard. Landed badly, taking his stool with him, the hand that snatched for the edge of the table all but pulling that over, too. Glasses smashed and split as they hit the floor, and Mal reached down and twined his fingers around the man's collar to haul him partway up again, aware of hands whose first reaction was to reach for a gun stalling all around him in the very public setting. The fellow he had a grip on recovered himself enough to start a move and Mal promptly hit him again, opening his other hand as the blow connected and letting him fall.

By that time the flunkies had finally figured there were options further down the list than shooting on a station with a Fed contingent, however small a one, on hand. Zoe laid out the first that lunged and she and Mal were preparing for the onrush when their captain barked an order that held them in place. Given he was pitching to be civil-like, Mal let him get up to one knee. Holding himself up with one arm hooked over the righted table, the fellow looked mightily pissed as he demanded, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Thought that one was self-evident." Mal drew back a foot, figuring on a kick in the gut for extra measure.

They were drawing a fair bit of attention by now, bar fights being the spectacle of choice over cortex streams anyday. Jayne over by the counter was watching with interest and had the attendants arm casually pinned under his own, preventing him reaching the alarm that would bring security running.

"Stop!" the downed captain yelled, arms rising to shield himself. Utter confusion mixed with the annoyance on his face, and Mal relaxed his readied kicking foot. Somewhat. "I don't know what you think I did," the fellow grated, and his voice had a slower catch that was almost a drawl even in fury. "I'm telling you, I don't know you."

"The hell you don't!" Mal delivered the kick with a special malice and watched the fellow curl up around his midriff.

There was a click as Zoe levelled her sawn-off calmly at the flunkies, who'd made a start on surging forward again. Mal shot a glance her way; her expression was cool, committed, though he knew she didn't have the first idea as to the root of all this, any more than Jayne did, or the rest.

"Sir--" the one woman among the group began nervously.

"I said I don't--" the captain hissed with what he had of breath, on the floor with his arms over his gut and his teeth grit in pain.

The girl gave them all an unfathomable look as she slid down to his level, with a slow caution paying courtesy to Zoe's sawn-off, and spoke quietly into his ear. The captain's face went from fury to dumbstruck, then made its way around to caginess as he looked Mal up and down with recognition finally in his eyes.

"Didn't expect I'd be seeing you again," he said, without any kind of inflection at all.

"Well, now. Would imagine there's a truth, given last time you saw me was when you left me bleeding to death." Mal wouldn't have minded, at that reminder, getting a couple more kicks in, but there was a girl in his way - albeit one that, granted, he had no great love for either, and it seemed the moment had regrettably passed. He was aware, though, of movement in his peripheral vision, as Zoe became a bit more free with that gun of hers.

"Any time you care to be explaining that, sir," Zoe prompted easily. "Might help me decide how many bullets ought rightly be put where."

Some of the SS Walden's crew looked like they'd be appreciating that explanation more than a little themselves, and Mal reluctantly said, "Time we launched the shuttles when the catalyser went, I stayed on board, got us the replacement part? This here'd be that kindly good Samaritan provided it, a sitch in exchange for a bullet in the gut. Real bargain, wouldn't you say?"

Zoe's chin rose a fraction. She levelled the sawn-off with deliberation. "Reckon we should return the favour?"

"Oh, hey - wait," the captain said, finally making it to upright, girl under one arm, broken glass debris crunching under their feet. "Now, I can see how you'd be a mite ticked..."

"With the bastard shot me in the gut, left me for dead and tried to steal my ship from under me? Could say I'm holding a tiny grudge."

"...I think we're working under a misapprehension here," the fellow continued, with a forced-sounding laugh, although for the rest he could fake conciliatory well enough. "We didn't never intend to let you die." He looked 'round his crew with an expression told them they better look sincere and look it sharp. A couple of them nodded obediently.

Mal found himself laughing. Was a certain ridiculousness to it all. He swatted Zoe on the shoulder with the back of his hand. "Best put away the gun. Think we might be making some of these good folks nervous."

"Sir." She looked dubious about his sudden switch to high spirits, but holstered the gun, though she kept a hand close by it and her face stony, declaring good and clear it was just a half-second short of being out and pointed at all and sundry again. Over at the counter Jayne glared dourly and made his own hand look itchy.

Mal stepped forward and clapped a proprietary hand to the shoulder of the SS Walden's captain, stealing him off the girl. "Riding past for the moment the issue where I don't reckon I believe a single word of that, I think we might live and let live, should circumstances allow. Circumstances bein', 'course, that I'm thinking a bullet in the gut is a thing requiring a certain recompense." He righted the fellow's stool with a flick of his foot, sat him down, brushed him off, and smiled broadly into his glare. Mal jerked his head to Wash and Kaylee, who'd moved up to hover at Zoe's back; to Jayne watching grinning at the bar. "You're buyin'," he told the other captain. "Hope you brought enough to cover plenty of little bits of parasols and fruit on sticks."

***

"I'm thinking Simon maybe nixed something in there he shouldn't have," Zoe observed, leaning around him to tap her knuckles on his skull as they headed back to the ship, both of them stepping quick as they might without drawing any more attention than their sorry state already merited.

Mal flicked her hand away. "Brain's just fine - though I'll give you the headache... which ain't helped by any more taps on the head I don't need." He painfully explored his near-swollen-shut left eye. "'Sides, that was one hell of a bar fight. Best in a while, wouldn't you say?"

"It's always worrying when you start looking for the fights, sir."

He rolled his eyes. Eye. Best to give up on any wild ambitions for the left one for the near future. "Was it not a hell of a fight?" he repeated.

"It was..." Her face twisted up. "I can't say I wouldn't have preferred not to have my husband and Kaylee caught up in the middle of it."

"Hey, Jayne got them out okay, and no sense dwelling."

"And you don't think we should have reported Captain Lewis and his people to the authorities? They tried to kill you, sir."

"What? No!" Mal frowned at her, scandalized. "I am not snitching nobody out to the Alliance. 'Sides, their word 'gainst mine as it is, way our luck's tweaked they'd lay something worse on us by way of return. And wise men do say 'never let yourself get caught up in legal proceeding when you got three tagged fugitives on your boat'." Lowered his for saying the latter. He added with a grin, "Might give him pause if there's a next time, old corpses showing up and beating on him." Laughed. "Reckon I startled 'em some for sure. Dead man walking. See that girl's face?"

"I did." Zoe nodded. She leaned in conspiratorially, and he leaned in too, thinking she had something important on her mind, but as it happened all she confided was, "I think you're drunk, sir."

"It's a distinct possibility," he allowed. "Liquid refreshment bein' free and all - now, that one, you got to allow me. You people been griping at me all evening 'bout wanting to drink."

"You knew it would end in a fist fight," she said.

"Let's just say I'm hoping Captain Lewis is gonna have that pain in his gut a fair long while to remember me by."

Zoe's sighed, albeit with disgust rather than defeat. They were nearing the docking ports where Serenity was berthed, where the glitter of the rest of the station gave way to function and disrepair - the businesses on Athena might subsidise the docking facilities, didn't mean they'd throw in any more funds than they absolutely had to. Twenty-odd years of unidentified stain and surface fatigue decorated the walls.

They headed up the tube to Serenity. Book and Inara were in the hold, talking to the new-returned Kaylee and Jayne, or trying to leastways, given their coherency level had had better moments, and they looked up as Mal and Zoe came in. Mal didn't miss Inara's eye-roll as she saw him. "Ouch... I heard there was a bar fight."

"There often is," Zoe said.

"That was... kind of my point."

Couldn't be any sort of good when the two women were exchanging those sorts of looks over him. Mal broke off from Zoe's side, strode on past Inara and up the steps onto the walkway, calling back down, "Wash on the bridge?"

"He went up to run a check," Kaylee provided, and at least she wasn't on his back now, though that likely had something to do with a comfortable level of inebriation.

"Fine." The walkway seemed to sway a little more than normal, and pondering upon it slowly reached him the conclusion that maybe Zoe had a point. He wondered if the staff had finished scraping Lewis and his boys up off the floor just yet, and that thought provided a warm, happy glow that carried him up the last of the steps onto the bridge.

"Whoa!" Wash looked up and mock-cringed away. "Nice one with the eye..."

"Think it impressed Inara," he agreed, and glanced past Wash to the pilot console and a flashing readout. "What do we got?"

Wash half-turned, fingers hovering over the controls. "Message for you, 'Malcolm Reynolds', marked priority," he chirped. "Still, looks like it's been sat here the four hours since we left."

Mal tipped his head. "Best run it, then. Could be someone wants to make us rich and we don't know it."

His pilot laughed and flicked a switch. Any bent toward joviality died quick for them both at seeing the face that appeared on the screen.

Wash loosed a long and expressive string of Chinese, one hand rising to his forehead and hovering there. The way he sat back in his seat had an air about it of backing as far from the screen as he might.

"Niska," Mal said.

"Ah. Mister Reynolds," the old man greeted happily, and Mal had to remind himself he was watching a recording. "You are well, yes? Now, you will remember I had some reservations from your last job for me--" A waved hand flashed across view, dismissive "--forget them. They are gone. I feel very much, in fact, that we can do business again." Niska nodded eagerly, all self-congratulation. It did little enough for Mal's nerves, watching and waiting.

The screen's image shook and there was a burst of static, in which something new was dragged into focus. Something, Mal noted as the interference level dialled down some, that was skinny and red-haired and spitting mad fit to bust. He blinked, disbelieving his eyes, and was aware of Wash sinking back so completely in shock as to give the impression of trying to hide inside his chair, gulping a soft, "Oh, my."

"Malcolm, sweetie--" came the new voice over the message recording. "Don't listen to him! Don't you do it! He--"

A smack of a burly hand - not Niska's, who wasn't ever a fellow to do his own dirty work - sent her falling out of view, replacing her with Niska's less attractive mug again.

"You see?" The old man carried on nodding, cordially like he was inviting them to cocktails. "I have your wife, Mister Reynolds. This business... it is between us; none of her doing. Such a pity, to involve the young lady. But you and me... we can do business again, yes?"

Mal choked, and swallowed, and managed to stop with the gaping long enough to stutter, to an equally stunned Wash, "Seems like it's the day for running into old friends..."

***

Chapter 2

All of which meant the whole lot of them ended up arrayed 'round the kitchen table trying to sober up again 'stead of taking their carcasses off to bed as planned. Mal stood with his spread hands rested wide across the end of the table, and he could feel through his palms, fainter through the soles of his booted feet, the steady beat of Serenity's engines humming smooth and sure as she carried them away from Athena Station.

Around the table, Kaylee looked miserable and hugged a mug of black coffee, Inara looked stony, Simon uneasy, River distracted, Jayne impatient. Book held himself neutrally off to one side. Zoe and Wash, seated together just on Mal's left, had their hands clasped under the table, his demeanour unusually aggressive and hers supportive.

"What I want to know," Mal said, staring down at his hands with a mite too much focus, "Is how in the hell Niska even could have known to snatch her? Woman's got no ready connection to me - we've met all of twice, a handful of days either time."

"You're married to her," Inara said, without subtlety. "Most people would go so far as to term that a 'connection' of sorts."

"One that only happens to exist between me and her and her and half the rest of the gorram 'verse," Mal retorted. "No. The two of us, we got nothing. No way Niska could've known 'less she went to him... Damn fool woman prob'ly figures she can play him, too. Got to be a trap." He rubbed his forehead with his fingers, headache improved none at all by all the palaver. "Zhen zao gao. The two of them workin' together... hell, maybe Saffron found one she'll reckon a keeper, long last."

"If she is working with him," Wash said, sounding a mite more concerned than Mal might've expected. "Not saying I believe she isn't," he added quickly, "But much as I might not like her and sure as hell don't trust her, that doesn't mean she deserves--" Old pain in his eyes as his voice cracked up, and Mal held his gaze and nodded tightly, letting him know he'd no need to finish that thought.

"Mal?" Zoe waited 'til she had his full attention before she said carefully, "There is one explanation - if she's been using your name." A drag in her voice like on this point she backed up her husband only mighty reluctantly. Well, she had been the one to deal with the best part of scraping up the mess last time.

It threw Mal. "Using my--?"

"You are married to her," Wash said.

"I am not married--" He spluttered and choked on the protest. "Wait... are you saying that 'Mrs Reynolds' is going 'round bein' Mrs Reynolds?" Rustling up enough disgruntlement at least to shove the sick feeling all this evoked to the back of his mind. "That crazy woman's claiming to all and sundry that she's married to me? Ta ma de! Got problems enough as it is without some gorram tweaked floozy using my name, getting into scrapes, pissing people off and telling them she's my gorram wife in the rutting bargain!"

"She is your wife," Book reminded flatly.

"That's beside the point! That's a - a technicality, is all."

Jayne raised a hand, albeit wavering, still dopey with drink. Once he noticed he had the floor, he grunted and looked a moment like he'd forgotten just what he'd been waiting to speak, then asked, "Am I losing track of the part where we don't like her? Hell, she did try kill us all that one time. Not to mention leavin' you stranded butt-naked in the middle of nowhere, Mal." He made no attempt particularly to hide his amusement 'bout that point. "Even if it ain't a trap, why the hell would we care?"

"I'm thinking mostly I don't," Mal said curtly, and furtively fielded a few glares courtesy of Kaylee, Book and Wash for the most part. "But if it ain't a trap, he's got hold of that crazy woman 'cause he thinks she's my wife. She tried to kill us, and she ain't our friend, but like Wash said, that don't mean she deserves what Niska'd do to her. I've been there and I wouldn't wish it on anyone."

There was a brief silence, followed by Zoe asking a little too obviously for the purposes of breaking it sooner rather than later, "How'd Niska know where to contact us to be sending love letters, anyhow?"

Kaylee stirred. "Saffron must've given him the codes. She was into everything when she was here that first time, y'know?"

"So we don't need to be worrying too much on that score, least - I mean, it don't look as though he's got any current beam on where we are."

"We could worry," Wash suggested. "We don't know what else she might have told him."

Mal shook his head decisively, changing tack. "She doesn't have enough on us. Might know a bit 'bout how we operate, but she don't know where we're at. Woman might make her living, such as that is, playing folks, but she don't understand real people not out to screw one another over."

"While I agree with you there," Inara said carefully, "What she clearly does know about us is you, Mal. She's already played you successfully twice."

"That supposed to be some sort of a commentary on me?" he shot back, with a wince that wasn't entirely joking around.

"It's an observation that you're in danger," she responded. "She knows you too well. I just need to know you're not going to do something crazy out of misplaced gallantry. Because that results in... well, sword fights, for one, and we know what happens then."

"Misplaced sense of-- Inara, she's my wife!"

Inara sighed huffily, folded her arms and looked down her nose.

"Didn't seem much like she was tryin' to convince Niska of the truth of how things are between the two of you, cap'n," Kaylee said, worriedly.

"Yes," Inara said. "'Don't do it, Malcolm, sweetie'! Ca bu shi. I'm all overcome." She fluttered a hand before her face as though fanning herself against fainting.

"Perhaps she's afraid Niska would kill her if he thought her no use to him," Book said. "She wants to convince him the relationship between you both is real." Hands clasped before him and head tipped down, he frowned at Mal over the table and the heads of the crew.

"She wants you to come--" Inara began angrily, almost rising from her chair.

"Oh, no doubts on that score either way," Mal said, eying her calmly until she deflated.

"Don't do it," she insisted, back to just simmering. "It's a trap."

Mal sighed and rolled his head back on his neck, shutting his eyes tight momentarily. "Of course it is." He slowly pried himself up to standing, jerking his head across to-- "Wash?"

"Sir?" Zoe queried as he turned and Wash rose to follow.

"Gonna give that old bastard his reply," Mal told her, not looking around. He could hear Wash's steps at his back, almost speeding to running a couple of times as he purposefully strode on ahead, along the corridor and up the steps to the bridge.

He planted himself in the pilot chair and leaned forward to tweak the controls. "All set up for answering, right?" he asked over his shoulder.

"Yeah. Return codes attached to the message. Their origin doesn't match the co-ordinates for the meet or the skyplex - I could unscramble those. Wonder where old man sadist is hanging out these days."

Mal nodded. He held up a hand to silence any further talk, pasted on a smile that hurt to maintain, and flicked the switches on the console. "Niska," he said, keeping his voice smooth. "Hate to break it to you, but that crazed harridan you got there ain't my wife, nor anything to me I don't consider myself a lucky man to be able to leave to your tender care. Go play your games to your heart's content. Anyways, business to be getting to, so I reckon that about wraps us up for now. You be taking care of yourself, though, 'cause that unfinished business between you and me gonna get finished someday. Tell Mrs Reynolds I'm still waiting on the divorce."

He cut the communication off and sat back.

Wash stayed so silent he might not have been standing behind him.

***

"Shuttle prepped?"

He had himself a gallery of mixed expressions the like of which he'd seldom seen. Wash's was a 'specially lemon-sucking sort of a mixture, but he thought he saw approval in there somewhere. River was a couple of universes distant in a world all of her own, and Inara hadn't deigned to even be physically there.

Kaylee's sideways look and reluctant nod certainly seemed to indicate he wasn't winding his way back into her good books any time soon. He gave her a brisk jerk of his own head by way of exchange. "Good. Guess I'll be seeing you folks in a day or two, then."

"Mal, this is gorram craziness--" Jayne tried. Again. Mal cut him off with a look.

For a moment it seemed nobody had anything to say 'part from Wash's croaky "Good luck, Mal." Then Kaylee visibly forced herself to look at him and say, "You take care, cap'n. Come back in one piece--" She blushed furiously. "And I mean really. No missing ears nor nothing."

"On that score, you can count yourself reassured I intend to," he replied, grimacing and ruffling a hand through her hair as he passed, heading up the last of the steps to the shuttle.

Zoe ghosted from nowhere to lean casual against the shuttle's access port, arms folded across her chest, blocking his way. He hadn't noticed her leave the others.

"Well, now. I was expecting Inara." Mal halted a few paces short of her as it seemed she had no intention of moving herself, least for the time being. He frowned back over his shoulder. There was something decidedly uncanny in how his crew had seen fit to vacate the area. Specially the part where they'd done it with an absence of griping.

"It's become more than clear this past day that you've set your mind against listening to Inara on this one. After all, we all know how she feels about Saffron. How you did, too, or so I thought," she added pointedly.

"Inara sent you here to do her haranguing?" Mal guessed with some disbelief. "Or was there some kinda vote? Draw straws?"

Zoe sighed. "I'd be here because you and me go back a way further than any other pair of bodies on this ship. My call." She shook her head, looked away as her features stretched in contemplation, then back. "You know Wash is half-convinced you're only doing what you rightly ought to."

"And I take it you ain't convinced?" He swayed his weight from foot to foot in front of her, looking for an opening. Finally, he gave up the game and caught her arm, trying to guide her from the shuttle door. She foiled him by planting her feet and refusing to move. Zoe was a whole lot of stubborn, when you got down to it, for a woman who'd called him nothing but 'sir' for years.

He didn't particularly feel like using physical force to move her. It might hurt. That didn't stop him from loosing his exasperation in some choice curses.

"They all think you're being altruistic," she said, jerking her head back to where all the rest of his gorram crew unaccountably weren't. They'd planned this, he thought furiously. Zoe had planned this. Gorram sneaky, low-down ambush. A fellow could begin to feel put-upon.

"And I'm not? Risking life and limb to go rescue the little - well, since 'lady' clearly would be pushing the bounds of reason, let's go with 'missus'. Reckon even an old cynic like me is allowed a little altruistic lapse every couple years or so, right?"

Her face turned all the more stony. "I think it's risky, sir." She held his stare, and added, quieter, deliberate, "Pick a different fight. Not Niska. Not after last time."

"Not looking for a fight." Mal dumped the bag of supplies on the floor at his feet, and frowned at the expressionless surface of the wall, while Zoe leaned back and looked for all the world to be settling into her station at the door like it was an eight-hour guard post. "Just to look in on the missus, make good and sure she's just her own sweet conniving self and not bein' tortured to death for some old sadist's entertainment, then clear the hell out."

"Sir." The insistence in that word was hard. Yeah... Zoe knew him. Maybe read him better than he did himself at times. "Just because we got the better of her last time we crossed, you can't start thinking us on amenable terms with this girl. Hell, you got the better of her - I don't get the impression there's many who've done that. She probably has joined with Niska because she's out for revenge."

Her lips compressed at his lack of response. "At least don't do it like this - don't do it alone."

"And you'd all back me," he said flatly. It wasn't a question. "Alone is the only way I'm doing this. Last time we had Niska trouble, Wash ended up tortured, Kaylee near got herself shot, and River made of herself a gorram killer. You know something? It was me got us in business with Niska in the first place, it was me backed out and put his man through our engine. Got no call to be bringin' the rest of the crew into this. Innocent folks already paid enough on my account."

He looked away, deliberately not thinking of Inara... leaned down for the bag and pushed his way into the shuttle. This time, Zoe reluctantly gave way. "Counting on you," he said, turning, taking the next step backward. "Take good care of Serenity."

She grimaced. "Until you're back," she emphasised, and added harshly, "Don't want you landing me the job of mopping up any more of your body parts, sir."

He twisted her grim expression right back on her. "You and me both."

***

Mal kept the field glasses - clunky old metal-framed things patched together in some backcountry workshop that made his arm ache if he held them to his eye more than a few minutes a time - trained on the compound in the near distance; kept his calves locked around the branch and his body still, and ignored the gathering cramps in his limbs.

From his vantage he could see the whole of the back entrance, and also cover the front, because though it was sliced off from view by a corner of wall, the main building angled in on itself almost turning a full square and all traffic down to the main gate had to come that way. He had a more oblique view of the service gate, but view enough.

The inner perimeter was marked off by a large wall Mal's tree just scraped having the angle and height to view over. The outer perimeter was a hard-to-discern shimmer a few yards in front of that; electronic fence, requiring security codes to deactivate it section-by-section. He also knew that though it might seem like it would be a simple matter to take any long-range rifle with an adequate sighting mechanism and put a shot through the skull of the figure who was walking now across the yard, obligatory overmuscled goon tight to his side, that was one shot would never happen. A dampening field inside the compound put down all powered weapons within its range. Might be that an old-style rifle would make the shot, but the type of marksmanship could make it connect from that range without high-tech aid just wasn't in existence.

He watched the figure - and he wasn't close enough to make out for sure, even with the glasses, but all the same Mal was sure - gesticulate in familiarly animated conversation with the goon, before turning in around the wall and disappearing toward the main entrance. A feel of chill in Mal's stomach lingered as they passed out of sight, and he shifted minimally, searching for a more comfortable rest in the tree.

Dark motion caught his naked sight, and he snapped the field glasses back up into place, setting the branches rustling as he almost fell in the process. He zeroed in on the movement and watched a servitor white-clad in tunic and cap proceed purposefully across the yard. Their destination was an outbuilding composed of little more than a roof mounted on posts, under which he could make out the gleam and shapes of vehicles kept all shiny and polished.

He lowered the glasses briefly so he could rub a hand over his eyes, before setting them back in place.

Ezra was a world Mal had tended to experience in fleeting visits only, the last of them no exception given how he'd set down just in time to be bagged by Niska and hauled off to that fancy skyplex of his that itself weren't so fancy right now.

Apparently, the skyplex was still suffering some from the raid and the collision with Serenity - either that, or Niska's increased paranoia over its security after having a bunch of scruffy spacers whose numbers didn't so much as enter double figures take the place down. Either which way, it had been dead in space and opened up to vacuum, suited construction workers clamped to its upper side, when Mal had set his powered-down shuttle drifting past it earlier in the day.

Had taken a little while once on-planet to trace where the old bastard had relocated himself, traipsing the seedier bars in the planet's main settlement of New Omaha, but not long. Wasn't any hush about what Niska was up to. 'Course, he'd had to pick a few pockets to pay out to get the fellows drunk enough they wouldn't be remembering an unusually inquisitive fellow matching the description of one Malcolm Reynolds.

Turned out Niska's own blushing bride had connections - family variety. Seemed the old crime dynasties on Ezra didn't get much bigger or meaner. The compound where the old bastard was making himself comfortable now for the interim was one of their properties and packed with the security to match.

Which was no concern of Mal's on account of him having no plans whatsoever to be breaking inside the place. Fact was, it only had one real road in and out, and the trees along that had been let grow bushy enough while it stood unoccupied to be cover of a fashion, and he was fair certain that with a bit of patience something would crop up sooner or later.

He watched a small, utilitarian hover-unit emerge from the outhouse. A service vehicle best suited for short grocery runs to the centre of town, it would never break any speed records, but it progressed easily toward the service gate under the guidance of the white-clad figure just visible in the driver's seat. Paused while first the guard opened the gate (a procedure Mal caught little of from his angle of view), then again a second later. The electronic fence flickered out of existence, then back again after its passage.

Mal hastily stuffed the field glasses inside his jacket and slid down the tree to land on the straggly grass growing protected by its shade. He kept the tree between himself and the hover-unit as it passed, then broke cover and sprinted across the dust road. He continued to pursue the vehicle at an easier run in the shadow of a long wall belonging to one of Niska's less security conscious neighbours.

The hover-unit didn't stretch to much faster than a brisk jogging pace and following it on foot didn't stretch a body too much even in the oppressive heat of Ezra's desert-and-scrub climate, though likely it was fortunate the town wasn't a great distance. Less than a mile and a half saw them entering streets busy enough that the hover-unit had to pause constantly to give way, and trailing it became easier on the legs while harder on the eye. Ezra was a frontier commercial world in a state of evolution. Not yet possessing the like of Persephone's high-rise upward sprawl, but its cities starting to make inroads towards claiming the sky as the thin band of comfortable living in its hot climate was swallowed by settlements and industry. Folks there still held onto their rough edges, upper and lower echelons both, the upper being for a large part composed of Niska and his wife's sort, and all in all it was the kind of place the Alliance would probably have washed their hands of had they not already fought so hard for jurisdiction over its criminal sprawl. It was new and varied enough a society to throw all manner of folks out to decorate its streets. The array of different vehicles stashed and locked where space allowed bore out that factor, from hovers and shuttles to the camels roped to posts purpose-set into the streets for them.

His mark cut the engine of the hover-unit, adding it to that array, disembarking and stepping briskly off into the crowd - almost too briskly. Mal lost the mark a moment in the thick of a group of women shawled head to foot in black, surged forward with apologies quick to hand and managed to get the white cap back within sight.

He kept it in sight down the length of that street and around a corner on to the next, where colourful market stalls sprawled in clear danger of being flattened by the assorted traffic. He took in the lay of the ground and the confusion of the market, the density of pedestrians about, and spied the moment to make his move.

A surge of speed took him to the side of the white-capped figure: he pinned both arms and used his greater weight and momentum to carry them both onward. Turning down a narrow, quiet street, the noise and colour cut off like a switch had been thrown. Here, uneven buildings jutted out all higgledy fashion, their walls blotched with dark, unpleasant stains and the ground between strewn with garbage.

Mal pushed her forward of him, which not entirely coincidentally launched her face-first at a wall. The impact was loud in the sudden quiet, but not as loud as her indignant squeal. She bounced off the wall and spun around, staggering, the cap slipping sideways to loose a clump of red hair.

"Well... if it ain't the little wife," Mal said smugly, feeling his face stretch all a-smirk. "Honey, how've you been? What's that, tortured to within an inch of your life, you say? Uh-uh. Don't believe you. Try again."

***

Chapter 3

"Mal!" Her lower lip quivered, and her shoulders slumped, her hands half reaching toward him. "Thank God you came!" A hesitation on her part, then while he was still staring dumb at her trying to figure what to make of all that, he found himself suddenly in danger of asphyxiation courtesy of the redhead clamped to his chest. She sniffled into his shirt, and maybe it was his own smutty mind couldn't help but note just how her body was pressing 'gainst his and where. After a moment, she pulled back a fraction and looked up at him out of big, tearful eyes in a reddened face. Her fingers clawed themselves in his shirt and they pulled, like a little cat. "It was so horrible," she whispered. "He said he was going to hurt me, Mal. I thought that you weren't coming. I was so afraid I wouldn't be able to get away... He threatened to do such terrible things to me--"

"Aw, hey now." Mal patted her back all conciliatory, and leaned his face down into hers, giving her a real close view of his grin. "We both of us know you were never in no danger and you ain't but stringing me a line of lese."

She stilled in his grasp, and now he had an arm slung 'round her she couldn't move so easily. Her expression collapsed into irritation oh-so-very briefly 'fore she pasted over that with a smile. "Still, honey. It's so sweet that you came. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy." She cuddled up to him purposefully, and one of her hands somehow wriggled downwards.

"Hoo! Whoa." He let go of her and jumped back, and she tipped her head and gave a lopsided smile sweet as could be and downright dangerous. Her hands were curled together demurely, flush to her body between her thighs. "Think we're getting a bit familiar with the touching there. You keep your claws to yourself."

"Aw, hubby... How can you say that? Don't you love me any more? Or are you just afraid it might not be your pistol goes missing this time?" She smirked.

"Let's say we ride past the old ritual of pretending you and me have a relationship and skip right to the decent, honest shouting." Mal stuck a hand down to check his gun was, in fact, still in place, and curled his thumb through his belt, keeping ready. "What the hell you doing with Niska? Would've placed good money on him not being your kind of scene. Or did you decide you like a side of torture with your thievin' and conniving?"

'Saffron' scrunched her face in disgust and gave him an aggravated look. "I'm not working with Niska, that shrivelled piece of crap hun dan--"

"Let me guess. Already too married?"

"No, you donkey's fang pi." She looked offended in the extreme. "I do have some standards. Anyway, that old bastard doesn't get his rocks off unless someone else is screaming. You can count me surprised if they didn't drop off years ago from lack of use. Still, less reason to pity his bitch wife." She paused and got her breath back from the outpouring of bile. "I was just minding my own business when his rutting goons picked me up and hauled me back to this xi niao dump. Damn it, Mal, is there anything you're good at besides making enemies?"

"Not terribly," Mal responded flatly. "Is there any pressing reason Niska should've made you for my so-called better half, in amongst all those other fellows you're likely not on record as having married neither?"

She tucked her head down into her shoulders, smiling again. "I had to get some return on you, after your people made off with the lassiter. You don't begrudge me that, surely?"

Dear God... "What the hell am I gonna find you done and gone signed my name to?" he snapped, but she just raised one shoulder and rolled her head suggestively over to that side, eyes sliding away from his. "No... no, don't even tell me!" He jabbed a finger in her face. "With a bit of luck I'll need never find out. Least I'm guessing you won't be looking to be 'Mrs Reynolds' a while - ain't the smartest of moves when hubby dear got enemies like Niska sniffing around."

She looked sour on him and stuck out her tongue.

"Very fetching. Speaking of which, that's a real nice look for you. You hoping to pick up husbands or groceries?"

"Hoping to get the hell off this overheated rock, as a matter of fact. Mal, tell me you've got that rustbucket of yours lying around here some place and aren't feeling too adverse to giving a girl a lift?"

He laughed, and leaned back against the wall, drawing his pistol and spinning it in his hand without particular threat, and she responded by starting to pace over the same few feet of ground in front of him, hands clasped now behind her, her eyes never leaving him. "I got a shuttle," he said. "Thinking I ain't so keen on the notion of sharing it close-quarters with you. Seems I recall the last time I did that got me left middle of nowhere scratch my clothes."

"Come on, that was just a joke... I didn't shoot you, did I? Didn't dump you in the garbage." A certain resentment showing itself through the sweetness on that last part.

"Well, y'know, that was Inara more'n it was me. What can I say? Woman holds a grudge. Point of fact, most my crew secretly lookin' to thank you over the naked thing, seeing as how it made of them a mighty entertained bunch. Been a sure tale for brightening those dull afternoons." He stilled the gun in his hand with the barrel pointed at her, held it steady there and watched her steps falter and her back straighten sharply, confusion on her face. "Now, if you'd care to tell me the matter straight?"

"--What?" she asked faintly.

"'Bout whatever deal you and Niska got going," Mal emphasized. "C'mon, YoSaf. Contrary to popular belief, I was not born yesterday. If you're not working with that old bastard, got to be you're trying to scam him, but there ain't no way I'm gonna believe you had no part in planning any of this."

"Mal, you can put the gun away." Her sigh of disgruntlement turned quick to a pout when he didn't comply. "It's very flattering, sure, but be reasonable. You know Niska's not my kind of mark. I don't deal with psy-chos--" She clicked her tongue, sharply defining each of the last two syllables.

"Don't tell me. You don't like working with anyone nuttier'n you are. Damn, woman. You're playin' with fire just 'cause it can burn you. Anyone'd think you hadn't heard what Niska does to folks tick him off."

"I heard what he did to you," she said softly, stepping a mite too far forward for comfort, like she was oblivious to the pistol even when he cocked it. The subject matter unsettled him enough - or maybe it was her propensity to squirm and move that quick little body faster'n the eye could always follow, that got her on the inside of his arm. She ran a hand up under his shirt, provoking an involuntary shudder, and near climbed his body in order to obtain the reach to lick his ear.

"Wo de tian a!" He shoved her off, and wasn't too much for caring when she overbalanced from the force of the shove and ended sprawled in amongst the littered garbage. Her heels scraped the ground as she struggled to get back to her feet.

Her hands brushed down her skirt aggressively. "All right, you piece of crap! I get the no-touching rule. I don't know why you're being so precious all of a sudden. And what'd you do to your gorram head, anyway? That wasn't dear old Adelai."

Mal touched the healing over scar in its slowly regrowing shaven patch, thrown out by the reminder - then glared and settled the gun more aggressively back upon her. "Spot of brain surgery." Waggled the pistol. "Any time you're feeling like being truthsome, now."

She snorted and gestured aggressively with one hand. "You're not going to shoot me, Mal. Truth? You want the truth? 'Cause it's all I keep telling you..." Her forcefully forthright demeanour collapsed of a sudden as she seemed to snag the fact it really wasn't set to work. "Okay," she said frustratedly. "Truth? Happened for the most part just like I told it before. Niska's goons grabbed me to use against you, and that old bastard having a real good time showing me around his rutting torture playroom--"

"You cut a deal," Mal said.

"Hell, yes, I cut a deal. What would you have done? After all, it's not like 'we actually have a relationship'. The man was threatening to stick electrodes to my nipples! So I agreed to give him you to save my ass and buy the time to escape. Of course, I didn't for a moment think you'd be idiot enough to actually turn up. I thought Niska was the only fool under the illusion this was in any way a real marriage!"

"And I only came on the off-chance you really had gotten your damn fool self dumped in the middle of my--" Mal started, and cut himself off. "Gorram it! I don't even know why I came. Far as I'm concerned, Niska can play with his electrodes to his heart's content on whichever damn body part he so pleases his rotten, twisted self." He grimaced; paused and gestured to the uniform. "This was your plan?"

She shrugged. "You're welcome to try come up with one better for next time I have to escape from sadistic psychotics wanting to kidnap me just cause I went and rutting married you!"

"And if that don't got a beautiful poetry all of its own..." He wobbled the gun up and down indicatively as he added, "But you got access to the old bastard. Got the security codes for that fancy electronic wall."

"I picked up a few things that might be useful," she purred. "Why? You looking to avenge yourself on Niska." A laugh like breaking glass, but soft, like it was breaking in the next street. "You're the one calling me crazy? I'll trade. The codes for the shuttle."

He raised his eyebrows. "The codes for the gorram ride."

"No deal. Offer's no use to me if you're dead. And you will be dead, if you really do mean to go in there. Of course, it may take a while. How much did he get before, a day? Hear he's trying for the slow burn lately... managed to rack up a couple counts of a week." She bared her teeth briefly, ran her tongue over them. Taunting. "Think he could break you in a week?"

"I'm thinking you've thought on that thought a mite too long and too fondly," Mal commented, returning her a tight smile. "Say, you wouldn't really be holding a grudge about that whole thing with the trash? A professional girl like you?"

"Right now I'm a whole lot more interested in getting away from here with my nipples intact. Which is what you should be thinking of doing. Seriously, Mal! This guy Niska has a real hard-on for you, and you know how he gets his jollies." She caught his arm - not his gun arm, else he might just have shot her out of reflex. Concern and fear in that grip. "What say we... hop on that shuttle and burn gas away from this rock, hubby?" A faint whine caught in her voice.

Mal studied her a moment, frowning, then delivered a sharp rap to the top of her head with the end of the pistol and pulled it back for the express purpose of shoving it up to her nose so she had a nice view down the gaping hole of the barrel. "You wouldn't be trying to play me again, would you?"

She made a long, infuriated sound through her nose. "I just want to get off this lousy piece of shit planet! Why is that so hard to believe?"

"'Cause your lips are movin'," Mal said. "And I'll still be wanting those codes. No matter which way, those I know you got."

"Okay." She rolled her eyes and actually stamped her foot. Produced a small metal box no bigger'n an inch square out of her white uniform and held it up about a foot short of his face. Added, off his blank expression, "Yes, it's a key. Works on randomised or programmed combinations. I set this one to the combination for the fence. But it won't help you. You wouldn't get past the gate guard. All Niska's people have instructions. They know your face."

Mal frowned, thinking it over. Did seem to throw a wrench into the works, true enough, but that didn't rule out there being some way he could think around it. For example, if he could trust Saffron...

Something odd caught his eye. A smoky wisp on the air between him and the woman. Second he noticed it was the very same he felt its accompaniment of a funny tang on his tongue and an unpleasant burn in his nose and the back of his throat. Noticed too that Saffron was holding her breath. He jerked his head convulsively, expelled the air already in his lungs in a 'huff' and struggled to take no more in while already aware he was wavering on his feet. No sooner had he started to level the gun than she had somehow dodged - and there was something interfering no small measure with his thoughts, 'cause not nobody come move that quick. The pistol clattered as it hit the wall the other side of the alley. He folded and barely had enough control to grab the near wall and keep himself half-upright.

"You lousy gorram whore--!"

She brushed off the shell of the gas pellet she'd concealed between her index and middle fingers, the pieces making soft 'pats' as they landed on the ground. The noise seemed impossibly loud to Mal's senses. He felt disconnected from the world. Lost another few inches to the demands of gravity.

Saffron bent down as his backside hit the alley floor, searched him competently, and patted her open hand a couple times on his cheek, catching his chemically wandering attention. "I'm sorry about this - no, really," she cooed. "I know you're all out to walk in there under your own steam, but... this way seems surer. And I really don't want to aggravate my new business partner. See, he's kind of known for getting a little tetchy if things don't work out his way..."

"You don't want to do this," Mal tried to say. All that came out was a slurred string of unfathomable syllables.

"Poor baby." Saffron's hand trailed over his jaw. "I'll assume that was some sort of appeal to my better nature, but I'm afraid I'm really being paid far too much for anything like that to get a look-in."

Her smile stayed with him as the world submerged in darkness.

***

As it happened, he was fully out for probably not much more than five minutes, because the next he was aware of was voices in the darkness. Saffron's, simpering: "Oh, please help me, sir. It's my husband. He drinks a little and, well, as you can see... I really tried, but he's just too heavy for me to carry alone..."

A man's voice, "Sure thing, ma'am."

And Saffron again, "Oh, thank you, sir. My hover isn't far."

Mal felt large hands haul him up none-too-gently and he was slung over a shoulder. Saffron said, "This way," and after several bumpy steps where he definitely bounced off the alley wall more than twice the noise level rose dramatically as they turned out onto the street. There, it seemed another body jarred against him every other second.

He couldn't quite pry his eyes open, and sure as hell wasn't in fit shape to be performing coherent speech, not before the gallant fellow had dumped him with a force fit to rattle teeth loose onto a hard, smooth surface - the open back trailer compartment of the hover-unit - and had taken himself off with a last "ma'am" in Saffron's direction, while she thanked him, nauseatingly, about a half-dozen times more than was necessary by anybody's standards.

He was conscious of movement, a further weight alighting the hover, and then the whir of the power getting started and he felt the vehicle rise in a manner that left his stomach back behind at ground level. The stops and starts and general unruly shaking about of the ride through town helped rouse him enough to focus on the thought of himself headed toward a reunion with Adelai Niska that would assuredly get all kinds of unpleasant and messy, and that helped start his consciousness actively struggling to claw the full way out of the threads of the drug.

Some point shortly after the noises of the town had faded and the ride had grown a mite smoother, she turned enough to note his eyes were open - though it didn't do much in the way of improving his situation, since he could barely turn his head an inch to afford himself a view of anything more profound than the wall of the trailer compartment.

"Can you believe," she said, "I really, really am almost sorry about having to do this? Most of my... idiots, you could call them... they don't become the kind of fixture in my life that you have. Why, we could almost say we have something special..." She laughed, throwing back her head, letting the wind of the hover's motion catch her hair and whip it over her shoulders, freed now from that ridiculous white cap.

Mal growled out a phrase in Chinese - best he was able to, anyhow - that set her to laughing all the more. He tried to sit up, but there was no strength in his limbs and he fell back.

"I really wouldn't bother," Saffron confided. "It'll be a good few hours before the drug wears off enough for any dashing heroics... I have to thank you, by the way, for coming. I guess that really does mean you worried about me - at least a little. That was sweet of you."

"This... was the plan?"

She smiled over her shoulder. "Oh, yes. I didn't for a moment expect you to throw yourself on Niska's mercy on my behalf. But the curiosity would have just killed you if you hadn't done anything, right? That or your outdated white knight thing, anyhow. I enjoyed your message, by the way, although dear old Adelai was chomping to drag out the electrodes for a while, admittedly. He thought you'd deal. Sa gua. 'Man of honour', my perfect shapely ass!" Her expression twisted, perplexed, at his inarticulate grunt. "Oh, the uniform? I got bored... They're all just so stuffy. If it's not a riot about choosing new awful wallpaper for the 'plex redecoration it's arguments over the correct technique for a really sustained disembowelling. What's a girl to do? Plus, could always tease you out of cover a bit. I knew you couldn't just take a look and turn tail. Had to get with the talking... You know, Niska really does have no subtlety at all."

"Saf-- Yol-- whatever the hell your name really is," he said with difficulty, "You do not want to do this. A bit of thievin' and trickery, hell, I done it my own self - no harm, no foul - but what Niska does to people--"

"Are you going to beg?" she asked with apparent interest.

"I'm saying this ain't you. You're better'n that old bastard--"

"Why, thank you, Mal. Whoo! Here we are."

"We are?" He couldn't see a thing beyond the bed of the gorram trailer compartment and the tops of things and rutting sky. Renewing his efforts to break through the drug as they paused at the electronic fence for Saffron to dig out the metal box and activate the codes proved just as futile a task as she'd promised. Then, the security field was already behind them and the guard on the gate in front didn't sound too happy with Saffron, far as Mal could make out. Heard the fellow talk a moment into a communicator before he'd let them through.

"Saffron - Yolanda - damn it!" Mal said. "You can still turn back. Niska won't reward you any--"

"On the contrary," she said tritely. "I think you'll find Niska quite happily rewards those who stand by their deals."

Then the gate clanged shut behind them, and even if she was about to listen to the protests he had left, there wasn't anything either of them could do now, not with a goon hauling her off the front of the hover and a familiar voice several feet distant but closing in as it spoke, saying, "So she has returned to us after all. Good... my dear, we have been wondering why it is you choose to leave again in this manner. It is most uncivil behaviour from a guest, yes?"

"Get off me!" Movement from Saffron, presumably ditching her goon - comprehensively judging from the fleshy impact and groan that came to Mal's ears, where he lay still and silent. But it was a pointless hope, playing to that infinitesimal chance she'd decide to say nothing and try extricate them both from this. "That's a nice welcome party for someone whose only gone and bagged your... junk."

"Is that so?" Sudden excitement in Niska's voice. "Fenro, the hover--"

A shadow blocked out the light, the goon making of himself a big silhouette against the sun, and a deep voice confirmed, "Yep. She's telling the truth." A prod at Mal's shoulder, then a rough hand dragging his chin up for a better view. "It's him all right."

"Told you," Saffron muttered belligerently, somewhere.

Another scrawnier silhouette joined the first. "Oh, my!" chortled Niska gleefully. "Mister Reynolds... Your wife, she does not like you very much, I think. A shame - for this, I am sorry. But for me, ah... for me, this is a good day indeed. A very good day! Yes?"

***

Chapter 4

"Malcolm Reynolds." Niska's beaming face being quite possibly the thing he was least fond of seeing in all the 'verse, it was most 'specially not a sight he was jumping to experience with himself playing the role of Saffron's patsy and drugged up to the eyeballs. Unable to do a damn thing to resist the two over-muscled fellows who'd hauled him out of the hover, he slumped between them feeling like his bones had all turned to rubber. His legs seemed to bow alarmingly at some just plain impossible spot mid-calf.

Niska continued happily, "It has been too long... too long. And business since we last met has been, shall we say, not so smooth." He shrugged, gesturing helplessly with both palms around his new surroundings. "For you also, so I hear. You have Alliance trouble. And the work, it does not come so easily now as it once did, no? I think that maybe the reason both our business suffers, it is the same. Perhaps people do not hire you because they hear that Malcolm Reynolds, he cross Niska, so he may cross them. And people do not deal so much with Niska because they hear, Malcolm Reynolds cross Niska - perhaps they think that means Niska is old news now. It was remiss of us both, I think, to put this meeting off so very long a while. After all, we only solve our problems when we confront them, yes?"

While the fellow seemed mighty keen on getting all intense and philosophical about the thing, truth was Mal had to fight just to keep his head up and all signs indicated Saffron's knock-out pellet was working an unpleasant effect on his stomach. "Let's not pretend anything 'specially profound in how you're all set to kill me just as slow and mean as you can and just how happy that's gonna make you, you sick bastard."

He could see Saffron, over Niska's shoulder, roll her eyes and make like to distract herself, buffing her nails with the fabric of her stolen white cap.

Niska gave a sigh like he was a mile removed from all this unpleasantness, and flicked a hand through the air with a 'tut' sound on his tongue. The two goons holding Mal let go, dumping him on the ground on his back. Fenro rested a boot on his chest as he flopped and tried to roll, and Niska leaned over him, peering owlishly through those wire-framed spectacles. "Ah. We will talk later, Mister Reynolds. Perhaps when you will be more amenable to discussing the finer points of our business relationship, and where it has fallen down."

Which likely meant a later with a surgical knife tickling around in his gut. Mal met his gaze stonily, trying not to let on so much that the weight bearing down on his chest was making it a mite hard to breathe. The courtyard of Niska's temporary compound was bare, dry earth, empty save a few lines of small fruit trees slightly straggly from neglect. Stones and cracked mud dug into his back. He watched Niska turn away; rolled his head back to follow the line of the old man's attention.

Saffron gave it a moment before pausing in attending to her nails, and even then looked like she might go back to it anytime the situation happened to slip back toward boring her. "So," she said, with a lopsided smile.

"My dear." Niska inclined his head. "You have done well. Everything as promised. Perhaps your methods are... erratic... indulgent. This, I will forgive. I am very happy with the result. Very happy."

"That's nice," Saffron said, with an edge of spite. She raised the hem of her tunic the necessary two inches to loop the cloth cap through her underwear where it crossed her hip in a thin white band. The move seemed to make Niska's eyes bug a bit, the old bastard looked frankly scandalised. "I'm especially fond of the part where that presumably means you're ready to pay me my money."

"You will be paid as we arranged." Niska waved a hand in dismissal of the subject. "Indulge an old man, Mrs Reynolds, but why? You say you married this man, your husband..."

"He was a monster..." Saffron set her lower lip to quivering, making her eyes all big and tearful. Would've been all the more touching if she hadn't been flashing the world her panties not a minute before. "His sexual appetites were... oh, I can't speak of it, Mr Niska! Please, don't ask me what he made me do to indulge his twisted urges--!" She caught sight of him looking and he caught a definite mischievous gleam in her eye. "I think it was the war that damaged him, you see, and he could never--"

"Hey!" Mal yelled, lack of breath be damned. "You twisted gorram whore! Know how you can tell when this one's lyin', Niska? Hell, you can just assume it's her natural state!"

"Screw you, Mal!"

"In your dreams, you crazy pofu!"

Niska grimaced, looking like all the shouting wasn't doing him any favour neither, and shook his head, making a pained hissing through his teeth. "Please... Mrs Reynolds... Mr Reynolds... there is no need for this... uncivilised behaviour." He interposed his body between the two of them, his hands patting down the air either side of him, one for each. "Ai ya! It is terrible to see the precious thing that is love turn to so much... such hate..."

"What--? Let me get one thing straight here now; I did not never love that--" Mal started.

"Oh!" Saffron wailed in response. "Mr Niska, when I think of those times, those golden times, I could just..." She sniffed and wiped at her face with a hand. Behind the hand, she smirked at Mal, then pulled herself visibly together for Niska's benefit. "Okay, so you've got my husband for a chew-toy, do you think I could possibly get my money now? Or do we... do we have to re-hash all the bad times?" Her lip started wobbling again as she wound up.

"Fenro will arrange payment for your services," Niska clucked. Caught her shoulders in a manner almost fatherly, seeming more helped along by the touch of irritation in her outburst than not. "He will do so now." He guided her past Mal and paused, leaving her standing facing away from them (and offering from the ground, point of fact, a view up the back of her tiny skirt that some might consider trading him his current situation to see), to gesture impatiently for the fellow still had his boot on Mal's chest. The weight departed. The relief of being able to properly breathe again was almost painful.

Saffron broke loose as Fenro tried to guide her away, and dived back to plant a quick kick in Mal's ribs that he wasn't in any fit state to respond to. She narrowed her eyes and scowled calculatingly.

"Might be best you lay off the torture 'til the drug wears off, if you want him to feel it," she told Niska sweetly, as she retreated back to Fenro with a disdainful flick of her hair. She flicked her hips too, arrogantly, as she took a proprietary grip of the goon's arm.

Niska looked less pleased. "You gave him precisely what, Mrs Reynolds?"

She didn't turn around, nor let Fenro hesitate, distinctly pulling him along toward the house rather than the other way 'round. "Just a little evening mist," she tossed back.

Niska cursed as the two of them disappeared around the corner. He jabbed his finger crossly at the remaining goon, and at Mal on the ground. "Bring him."

***

Which got them right back onto familiar territory, with Mal roped up to a stand bolted secure into the floor. The bonds across his chest were made tighter for being all that was holding him up. The separate cords tying his wrists low to the structure on either side were tighter than need be to begin with.

Niska leaned in close, intently studying the salvaged ear. "This is very good work. Exceptional." He ran a finger down the almost invisible scar. Mal kept his chin straight and his eyes forward. "I think that you have an excellent surgeon, yes?"

"Nah. Should've seen his first try. Stitched the damn thing on backward. We sure did laugh."

Niska laughed, too. "Yes, this I remember. The jokes. You give me a spirited fight, Mister Reynolds. I have been looking forward to this." He tweaked the ear one last time, then at last left it the hell alone and stepped back. His footfalls, though not heavy, were loud on the smooth, hard floor. Presumably it was smooth and hard to ease mopping up the mess, but even so it had already taken on, around the stand and in a few other patches, a noticeable brownish stain. He'd been aware of the lingering disinfectant smell since he was hauled into the room.

"Hell, if more screaming's all it takes to take the fun out of it for you, then I will."

An instant shake of the head in response. "Oh, no... no, I do not think you will. I think rather you could not. It is in your nature. You see, I have learned a great deal from you, when last we met. You will not submit." Mal watched uneasily as he clasped his hands and paced the length of the room. The goon stationed to the side of the door might have been a statue.

This room had a more makeshift look to it than the last, and was fractionally smaller. Not that that helped his situation any. Still, maybe Niska hadn't brought all of his pets from the skyplex.

Niska raised his index finger, waggling it thoughtfully in the air as he turned again to address Mal. "Your wife... it is a pity. Such an attractive girl. I hate to see a marriage break down. It... saddens me. A man should be able to keep his woman well."

"She's not my woman," Mal said, aggravated, then did a double-take. "--Gorram it, you're gonna start up giving me marriage counselling while you torture me now?"

"So defensive, and yet this does seems to be a perennial problem with you. Always with the women trouble." The old bastard chuckled and waggled that gorram finger again. "My wife, she and I argue, we..." He laughed fondly - nay, lovingly - the idea of which emotion in Niska took the brain to a scary place Mal didn't want to so much as contemplate. "It is good, yes? Proof that there is fire. You need that, for any marriage that is to last." He screwed up his face, disappointedly, head shaking again. "I see that fire, your wife and yourself-- I say it is a pity."

"Fa kuang! She ain't even my wife!" Mal's annoyance rocked him upright against the ropes before he collapsed back. The drug was wearing off, though taking its time. Best not to let Niska in on either fact. He forced his train of thought back on track. "She's a gorram grift artist with companion training only gone and got herself married to about a hundred men in her time - only one of which happens to be me!"

"It is sad that you can speak of each other so. Oh, that she has her history, I am sure. Why, my own Marlena, they say she killed two husbands before me... it makes it exciting, no? But, ah... you do not wish to hear about me. Where are my manners? This... this is about you. We will learn a little more about you today, Mister Reynolds." Niska turned to the goon and clapped his hands; rubbed them together enthusiastically. "We shall begin now. I grow impatient, all this waiting, this troublesome narcotic..." He trailed off into muttered cursing, before coming back, "We will make of it what we can."

Mal swallowed and offered, "By all means, you tell me more 'bout your Mrs Niska. Marlena, huh? Two husbands? Sounds like a peach."

"Tsk." Niska flicked a hand at him. "Enough! No more distractions! No matter your troubles, it is fortunate for me indeed that your wife is so unhappy that she comes to me and says 'I can give you Malcolm Reynolds--'" He drew out the words with a certain glee.

Mal jerked in his bindings as the meaning behind that struck home. Fetched his head a bash on the side panels that kept him from turning it. "What--? She came to you?" he demanded, meeting Niska's stare flat-on. "You're telling me she came to you?"

"What difference does this make? Tsk, you wish only to be changing the subject." He gestured to the goon, who started to dig a whole array of less-than-pleasant looking gadgetry out of a tall locker in the corner, some of it familiar from last time and some of it not so much.

"Hell, yes," Mal agreed emphatically, eying the junk. "But the difference it makes is she is screwing you and using me as the bait to do it, so you just might want to listen up here, Niska! She don't do deals and she ain't overly interested in taking jobs workin' for money. She plays for people, and this time you and me are it." He jerked against the ropes again, to no avail.

Niska shook his head, though he looked a little shaken. "This is not becoming, Mister Reynolds. I hope for better of you."

"You better hope that I warned you in time, and that you get your head out of your ass and act on it, 'cause I'm telling you the truth. That woman will take you for everything you got and laugh at the result while you're standin' in your altogether. Hell, yes, I'm married to her, but I don't even know her gorram name - 'ceptin' that it sure as hell ain't 'Saffron'."

"This is... fantasy," Niska said, but sounding now markedly uncertain.

"Well, let me give you some fact." Mal thought furiously. "You sent her off with a fellow. Fenro, right? Now, you seen how she is with men, how she wraps 'em right 'round that little finger of hers sweet as can be... Don't you reckon those two been gone just a little too long?"

He watched Niska cast a questioning glance to the goon, who left his array of goodies alone a moment to shrug and generally look like even that much was putting a tax on his brain.

"Come on!" Mal barked. "Tell me... Fenro got himself the keys to the safe, right? Must do, if he's all set to pay her. Just how much cash you keepin' here on site?"

Niska's expression turned to flat-out terror in an instant. "Mielt," he instructed the goon, "You stay here. Watch him! Fall for nothing. I... I shall return."

***

Mielt - assuming that was a name - looked uneasily after his employer, then back to Mal, who pulled an unhelpful face and did his damnedest to shrug. Following the parody that turned out to be, the goon lost interest in him and aimed the dint between his brows back at the door. Mal took some advantage of that, testing the bindings on his wrists to see if he couldn't find some slack.

But a small sound called his own attention to the door, just in time to be watching as it swung purposefully open and Saffron strutted in. So quickly the goon barely had any time to react, she squeezed something in a raised fist, opened out her palm and blew across it into the unfortunate man's face. He went down like she'd brained him with a rock.

Mal blinked. "Don't tell me. You're my fairy godmother, now."

Avoiding the settling film of dust on the air, she brushed her hands down on her white tunic and curtseyed and blew him a kiss. She then retreated to the door and dragged through it a very large bag, which she deposited just inside.

"I'm guessin', then, that this would be the plan," Mal commented slowly, eying the evident weight of the bag, how it pulled her downward as she set it on the floor. "Zhe shi shenmo lan dongxi? You hand me over to Niska to get my fingernails pulled and it ain't even for a payout - I'm just the gorram distraction!"

"Took you long enough to figure it out." She stepped up to the frame he was tied to, and curiously walked around it, her hands trailing over the bars and loose ends of rope and wires. Completing the circuit, she swung on the frame, leaning in to him. "You could at least appreciate me spinning him a little untruth about the gas. You're still intact." She tugged at the rope around his chest, testing it more than anything else, then pulled herself forward to lean her head on his breast and nuzzle in. Her hair tickled his chin and got in his mouth. He twisted his head, spitting flame-red locks. "Did I mention this is kind of a hot look for you?" Saffron teased. A hand came in low and snuck in a fondle through the fabric of his pants, making him muffle an undignified sort of a yelp.

"Get the hell off me, you devil woman!" He barely managed to keep a lid on the volume.

"How about we make it a dinner date, hubby?" She looked up into his face; big innocent eyes not to be trusted one inch. "You, me, the thumbscrews..."

"Woman, you're crazed. Get me the hell out of these damn things before Niska comes back and starts tryin' out his fun-filled hobby on the both of us." He twisted. There was some give in the ropes hadn't been there before, courtesy of Saffron's prodding, but not enough.

She stepped back, a frown on her face. "Who said anything about letting you loose?"

He stilled. "Do not joke about this. I played your distraction, you got your loot. Now all's fair, you let me loose and we can make tracks, ma shang. But you are not thinking of leaving me here like this."

Her face screwed up like she'd sucked a lemon and she kicked him in the ankle with her pointy little shoes. "You left me in the garbage, you fink! Do you have any idea what I had to do to get away before the feds landed--?"

"So? You stranded me butt-naked on the planet of rutting dust that gets into crevices you didn't even know you got! I was keepin' finding that stuff for a month. So I think we're even, princess, 'part from the bit where you're itching to sell me out to the sick bastard who wants to slowly torture me to death."

"Well, I think that was your doing. Tell me, what kind of an idiot first agrees to work for Adelai Niska and then goes back on the deal? Please. Half the 'verse would call it plain suicide."

"I take your point, Saffron, and why don't I skip commenting on the irony here and you do me a kindness in return. Let me the hell loose and stop screwing about!"

She pouted and shook her head. "You ratted me out!"

"And who in the hell wouldn't have? Fair's fair, lady. Stopped him getting out the hot pokers a mite longer. Which, let me think, I do believe I was in the position of needing to avoid 'cause of you."

"Sorry, Mal." She shrugged, and stepped back out of reach, and smiled that little-girl smile had made him think her about a decade younger'n she actually was, that first meet. "I don't think Fenro would like the thought of sharing me, and besides, you'd only find a way to throw a big, dumb spanner in the works anyhow." She made to turn and retreat.

"To hell with you." Mal threw back his head far as he might to yell, "Hey, Niska! Might interest you that gorram two-faced whore is--"

An inarticulate note of rage escaped Saffron's lips, and in a lightning quick motion she'd cracked a fist across his jaw, bouncing his head back against the panels. She looked around quickly, frustration twisting her face, then tore the fabric belt off her tunic and leaned up to tie it over his mouth, forcing the knot past his jaw.

"There." She dusted off her hands briskly, while he glared daggers at her and made a few noises he was damn sure she'd at least grasp the general gist of. She backed over to the bag, hauled it up over her shoulder, eyes never leaving him. Something odd in there now... maybe trepidation. "I wasn't just going to leave you, you know," she said resentfully. "I was only kidding around. Leastways, I was gonna leave you this." Something small and metal flashed in her hand. "Screwed that one up, sweetie."

She turned for the door. There were faint shouts now. She didn't have much time.

She paused, cursed violently, then darted back. A hard, sharp something pressed into his palm. Then with a flick of red hair, a stuck-out tongue, and a glimpse of creamy thigh as she dug under the tunic to draw his own gorram gun out of her underwear, she was gone.

***

Chapter 5

Niska came back through the door at a run, a stand-in goon a bit less imposing than the originals a step behind him. That cost them a moment of trouble when Niska stopped dead, peering at Mal all tied up like a Christmas present with an intense, confused re-evaluation, as though he hadn't expected to be seeing him there at all. The goon almost knocked him flying and spent a stretch of time gesticulating frantic-like with both arms trying to placate him, 'til finally Niska lost patience and flailed a hand at the fellow in slapping blows that couldn't have connected with much force until he backed off.

"She was here," Niska said, not in any way a question.

Mal made an aggravated sound from behind the gag, and hissing air through his teeth in irritation, Niska stepped up and yanked the gag loose without even taking the pause to instruct his help to up and do it for him. "Yes," Niska said, harder than his usual wheedling, gentle-old-grandpa tone, while Mal worked his dried out mouth. "She was here. For a moment there, I think perhaps you are working together, but then - here you still are." Wrinkling his nose up, he tossed the mangled white belt into the corner of the room.

"Yeah, here I still am. Turns out she just came here for a spell of bragging on her way to make a getaway, which by the by I noticed you boys making a fine job of not preventing." He hacked on the last few words, turned his head aside inasmuch as was possible, and spat, trying to rid himself of the cloth fibres sticking to the inside of his mouth.

Niska gave it a look that said it wasn't the preferred fluid to be decorating those floors. "My people are scouring the compound for her," he said. "They will find her."

"Good. Hope they do... you really still think I'm spoiling to give a damn about that woman? Stick a claw in her gut and turn up the power, I don't care."

"No." Niska shook his head and sighed falsely. "I don't believe you do. Still... maybe it adds interest for both of us. Maybe I let you watch, yes?" He grinned, finding his own twisted kind of enthusiasm in the idea. Held up a finger. "Ah. Or maybe I let her watch. That, you would not like so much. Very interesting... We see, perhaps, who breaks first? Or maybe you do not really like the thought of your wife being hurt when you are watching. Maybe she likes it less, too. See, we can discover these things. A little pain... ah, pain is knowledge. Without it, we stagnate, we disappear, we are nothing. It is tragedy that defines greatness, Mister Reynolds."

"I guess you might not be wrong," Mal said noncommittally. "Shan Yu come up with that charming little ditty as well?"

Niska gave a dismissive shrug. "I paraphrase." Broke off and turned as one of his men entered the room with the kind of demeanour didn't suggest any pats on the back awaited the news he was bringing.

Niska rolled off a sharp line of exasperated Chinese. "What has gone wrong now?"

"Ennert and Grabonik are dead. We cornered her, but she got a gun from somewhere." The man took an unhappy pause for breath. "They're gone, Mr Niska. Her and Fenro both. They took one of the sub-atmosphere skimmers. Munif and Sorensen went after them, but..."

"What? What?" Niska pressed. "No more delays!"

The beleaguered fellow swallowed. "Sabotage, I think. I saw the flames and the smoke from one skimmer crashed on the horizon. The second - I think it was Munif - I think he managed to keep a lock and keep in the air. If he's put out a tracer signal--"

"Ah! We can follow. Yes." Niska nodded. "You will find Gunald and tell him to prep Eunice. Tell him to run a thorough check. Quickly! Go!"

Mal had watched the proceedings with cautious interest, but wiped his face clean of expression as Niska turned back to him. "Mister Reynolds," the old bastard said. A curt gesture to his attending goon saw an ugly, barbed knife obediently placed in his hand, and he set its tip to Mal's chest, point digging in just enough to break the skin, just beneath the band of rope. "Your wife, it seems you are right. She proves more trouble than she is worth." A slice of upward motion severed the bindings easily, leaving Mal trying not to fall forward as his weight caught for an instant on his still-tied wrists. "I think that it will not be a problem for you, to help me find her, yes?"

***

Eunice, as it turned out, was a spacecraft - moreover, a zippy little modified Alliance bomber with a few years on her. Looked like one of the models commissioned just after the war in the push to recoup munitions losses. Given how a few body alterations and a few more cute additional touches to her paintwork in typical psychotic Niska style didn't come close to disguising what she was, it made a fellow wonder just how much influence the old bastard had to wield, that he could flaunt some serious black market Alliance hardware with no apparent fear of consequence. Hell, maybe that was the whole point.

Wherever Niska kept her housed it couldn't be too far off or secret, considering she was setting down in the dusty courtyard within ten minutes of him sending his man off to make the arrangements. When her retractable feet touched ground and her weight settled, her ramp lowered with the kind of smooth mechanical purr Serenity could only dream of, and Mal was hustled aboard after Niska, a situation he had no particular problem with given it meant they were headed away from Niska's House of Fun.

Inside of her gleamed. All the shine and glitter of any real honest-to-God Alliance boat, and Niska positively simpered over her, patting a console and turning to Mal with a beam crossing his face ear-to-ear. "Ah, you like? Yes?"

"Very nice," he said dryly. "'Eunice'?"

Niska looked all the more fond. "My mother's name. She is dead many, many years, I fear."

"Ain't that a shame," Mal said, all conciliatory. "Still, fancy she'd be right appreciative of you naming your pretty warship for her." Which was likely naught but the honest truth, what he'd heard of Niska's family so far.

She sounded as smooth from inside as outside, when she lifted again, the serious fellow positioned in the pilot's seat working with a diligent sort of a focus managed to ignore his psychotic employer attached to his shoulder like some kind of sucking leech. 'Course, she didn't have half the manoeuvrability Serenity did, nor even for that matter the sub-skimmer Saffron'd took, for all Niska could coax from her a turn of speed few vessels could match. Take-off barely caused those of them on their feet to sway, interior grav systems perfectly balanced to compensate on exterior stresses.

Mal backed up a fraction, placing himself behind all the rest so that none of them could have a decent angle on his tied hands. The tiny retractable knife Saffron had left him, all but useless how he'd been tied before - and wasn't that girl's humour just as hilarious as an ornery bag of snakes? - had been the very devil to keep concealed from the goon who'd tied his wrists behind his back. He eased it down now from where he'd since wedged it between his wrist and the ropes, and slowly, blindly, worked back the blade, using minimal motions and trying to keep his face blank and fixed.

At front of ship, Niska's folk were getting a lock on the tracer put out by the man in pursuit, no thanks to Niska himself seeming convinced his own constant second guessing and running commentary necessary to the operation.

The bridge was overlarge, taking up a good half the space available in the vessel. Typical Alliance practicality, placing function over people. Gave Mal pause to re-evaluate the Alliance crews who'd in the war used just such a boat as this to raze Independent troops on the ground. Four-man crew living on top of each other in this kind of a space wouldn't have been having too much fun in transit. Probably hadn't glittered so much either after a couple months cut off from supply bases, having to manually re-supply over land when fuel got scarce.

In the heat of battle the running could take up every man of that crew in properly balancing out weapon systems, piloting and navigation for complex manoeuvres. Current crew being two fellows looked like they knew what they were doing, one goon with a furrowed brow and Niska, Mal couldn't help but get to thinking on how Eunice didn't make for the most practical of toys.

Distraction aside, they finally succeeded in isolating the tracer signal and programming it into the nav, and the view forward of the ship changed as they shifted course without any feel of movement at all. Landscape of Ezra might be racing beneath them, but all visible through the screen was sky and cloud bands scudding past.

Mal got the blade to a fully retracted position and winced as it took itself a slice out the skin of a fingertip. He must have made some small sound, or else some flicker crossed his face that the goon caught from the corner of his eye, because the fellow stopped looking quite so out of his depth and all of a sudden took an interest. Mal returned him a sullen look appropriate to a condemned prisoner. Even so, the goon continued to watch him warily until the pilot said, "Got them," diverting his attention.

Niska and the pilot poured over a screen, their bodies blocking it from view. Saffron's stolen craft was too distant yet to be visible out front. Niska said, "I will speak to them."

The pilot reached for a control, then paused. "They're hailing us."

A noise of irritation at being pre-empted, then Niska said, exasperated, "Yes."

Mal settled the blade of the knife against a loop of rope as Saffron's voice chirped onto the bridge. "Howdy, boys. Niska - nice barge you got there. Bet you're even thinking you can catch me, hmm? I'm guessing you've my good-for-nothing husband on board, too. Hello again, Mal."

"Gratified, 'honey'." He slowly sawed the edge of the blade as he spoke up.

"There is nothing I have to say to you," Niska interrupted sharply, a very particular quality of anger in his voice Mal hadn't heard from him before. "I wish to speak to Fenro."

A brief commotion just carried over the comm in the form of unintelligible whispers that sounded agitated and mostly female, then Saffron said, "I'm sorry, Mr Niska, sir. Fenro doesn't want to talk just now about which wine you're planning to serve with his liver. Guess that means you're stuck with little old me."

Niska slammed his hand down hard on the panel, cutting her voice off.

It was possible to see the sub-skimmers now in front of them, two black dots that advanced speedily after that first sighting. A hail from the pursuit came through, requesting instructions, while Saffron's sub-skimmer tucked itself into an easy nosedive. As they themselves dipped, following her progress, Mal saw the ground was riddled with ridges and canyons, like a maze built on an enormous scale. The pilot murmured worriedly to Niska, and Niska barked into the comm, "Don't lose them! There are hot springs and geysers in the Srohin. Heat tracers will be useless to track them if they set down. We might never find them."

The second sub-skimmer peeled down into the canyons, sticking close to the tail of the first. With no weapons, there was nothing could be done on the unfortunate skimmer's part but to follow. The way the fields that controlled those things interacted if they got too close, any kind of shoving and they'd both be a fireball on the desert floor. Niska wound his hands in a tight ball and compressed them together in front of him, eyes fixed forward, as the more manoeuvrable little vessels headed where they couldn't easily follow.

Mal dragged the knife across the rope again, and this time felt it give. He parted his hands, just enough to feel the ropes loosen and begin to fall. He caught them and carefully wound the loops back over his wrists, hopefully looking genuine enough to convince.

Now all he had to do was wait his moment. Which wouldn't be happening while his hands were still a numb crackle of sensation, and wouldn't be while facing four-to-one odds on a ship he couldn't fly poised above a landscape the effective equivalent of a pit of spikes.

To his pilot, Niska said, "Stay above the canyons, but keep them in sight! We do not lose them." His grip of the pilot's shoulder was white-knuckled. How the hell much money had he been keeping at the compound? Mal tucked the knife up his sleeve, starting to appreciate the inherent entertainment possibilities of the situation somewhat better.

Niska's instruction took the bomber into a dive down toward the canyons, giving a real good view as they settled in to a flat course skirting the canyon tops. Jagged sand-coloured peaks plummeted down into shadowed abysses almost black by contrast to the sun-drenched teeth above. The two skimmers whirled into view before them, then disappeared again into the shadow where just a glint of light off metal betrayed the position of one or other. They emerged only in time to be blocked off by a slice of peak. Then, once more into view, and the pursuing vehicle, manoeuvring riskily to cut the other off, skirted a shelf of rock the wrong side of a blind bend, only to lose control and spiral end-over-end into the rock face. The resulting fireball expanded across the canyon and had barely registered upon those aboard the bomber before they were passing through its rising tower of smoke.

"Wo de tian a," the pilot said.

Niska, agitated, ground on his shoulder hard enough that even the stoic fellow winced. "Don't lose them! We must bring them down intact!" He peered at the scene, eyes searching, not finding.

Mal grimaced. Neck stretched taut for better view, his attention fixed on the smoke cloud below. A moment later the smoke cleared enough that he saw Saffron's sub-skimmer, still rocking a little on its coarse from proximity to the blast, forced to rise up out of the dangerous terrain in order to regain control in the open sky. Rising a mite too close to the bomber.

"Ah, we have them! Force them down, here." Niska tapped something on the readout screen with one finger. His delighted smile seeped back into place as he stopped mauling his pilot a moment to watch over the shoulder of the man at the main laser canon console who manipulated the controls into a weapons lock. Fellow bit off a curse as the sub-skimmer dipped again in its path, trying to turn back as the land dropped away from high, rocky terrain into rolling desert plains. He adjusted slightly and fired a concussion blast under the skimmer, forcing her nose back up.

Niska punched the comm. "My dear Mrs Reynolds, this has all been very entertaining, but I think you may find it advisable to set down now. Or at the touch of the button I could--" he cleared his throat as though uncomfortable with the threat as un-gentlemanly "--reduce you, too, to a fireball. And that would be most unfortunate for us both, I am sure you agree."

"Go for it, you dried-up old husk," her voice shot back, raw in challenge. "Blow your rutting money sky-high." The sub-skimmer tried to peel off upwards in a smart manoeuvre unconventional as all hell to boot. The gunner responded before Niska'd even barked his command, and the next shot fired just managed to explode above them without atomising them.

"I assure you, I will do that before I see you escape," Niska said.

A string of irate Chinese drifted back to them.

***

"Time you start earning your keep on this expedition, Mister Reynolds." Niska's wave of a hand saw the goon grasping Mal's shoulder and pulling an arm back to take a swing. "After all, the woman is your wife - you know her best."

Mal twisted and ducked, hooked a foot around the goon's ankle and put all his weight behind a shoulder in the gut that sent the man to the deck with a heavy crack of stressed alloy. He stepped around the downed fellow, flicking his gaze across to Niska, who was looking mighty peevish while the gunner on his right emotionlessly drew a pistol.

"First thing I'd say," Mal suggested easily, "Is don't the hell trust it - not nothing comin' from that gorram crazy woman. 'Sides from that, can't tell you a thing. You gotta know by now she ain't really my wife." He threw Niska a twisted smile and a shrug.

"So you say," Niska snipped, eying the goon on the floor. He started to say more, but an exclamation from the pilot diverted his attention.

They were setting down on a rocky landscape layered with pale dust, in a flat, shallow bowl caught between the sheer rock cliffs of the Srohin and the gentler sand slopes of Ezra's desert. The thin, winding ribbon of a dried-up river bed ran through its middle, and at a point where it pinched in sharply to the cliff face, Saffron had landed the sub-skimmer with a neat precision. While Niska's pilot completed Eunice's landing sequence, Mal watched two small figures, the smaller a distinctive flash of white and orange, climb down from the skimmer, linger a moment at its side, then move out of sight along the cliff.

"Looks like our 'Mrs Reynolds' there ain't finished yet," he observed.

The goon at his feet groaned and stirred. Niska tutted down at him and instructed the pilot as he cut the engine, "Help poor Ranulf to stand." He crossed to the door with the gunner at his flank and paused, fingers poised on the control. "Mister Reynolds - you will be so kind as to lead the way."

With an ornery goon coming up on his back harbouring likely no small amount of grudge, Mal was happy enough to oblige. Let Saffron take a few pot-shots at him if she was so inclined. He had the notion she'd be saving her ammunition for those best warranted it, if all the weapon she had was his own damn pistol. He incautiously stepped down the ramp onto the sand.

A hail of gunfire damn near took his head off, one bullet passing so close he felt its wind against his ear. "Tzao gao!" He flung himself down while shots were still firing and would have discarded all pretence his wrists were still tied secure 'cept for the gorram rope catching and refusing to pull clear, sending him off balance and dumping him on his belly into the sand with his arms still wrenched behind him. Craned his head up to see Niska and his boys were ducking back inside the ship, all aside from the gunner who was pinned down at the other side of the ramp. Looking the other way, he saw the stolen sub-skimmer and not a soul in sight. As he stared, a shot pinged off the near side of the vessel.

Coming from the other direction--?

He whipped his head 'round, fingers twisting and picking away at the loops on his wrists as he did, and found he could see them now: maybe three of them, taking cover in the boulders at the banks of the dried-up river bed. Looked like Saffron hadn't set herself down anywhere she hadn't been full well planning on all along.

He tore the ropes from his wrists, came up into a crouch and took a diving roll landed him behind a keen-looking set of rocks should serve as decent cover. Felt a smile not entirely lacking any trace of smug break through his face as Niska's outraged cry sounded behind him.

"Hey, Niska" he called, setting his back to rock and gauging the distance between himself and the sub-skimmer. "I'd stick around, but - well, you know. Guess it just ain't your day." Distance looked workable, though not overly pleasing. He surveyed the ground. Not much else placed well for offering cover 'tween here and there. Well... no sense in loitering around all day...

Mal broke cover, keeping low. Niska's man was returning fire, which did him a likely unintended kindness, and he felt just the tug of a bullet pass through his sleeve before he nipped past the narrow ledge left between the dry river bed and downed sub-skimmer into relative cover.

The door of the sub-skimmer was left open, and Mal reckoned on it providing an interesting sort of choice for Niska - try to catch him, or stay and catch the money.

"No you don't, you dumb piece of crap!" A shrieking orange-haired fiend took him down in a flying tackle as he made to haul himself inside the hatch, and the two of them rolled in the dust.

"Hey!" Mal scrabbled at the ground, trying to gain some purchase and mostly shredding the skin of his fingers as their momentum kept them rolling. "Saffron, wait, you don't want--"

Ground vanished from under them as they fell five feet down into the river bed. Landed on ground baked hard as rock by the sun - he landed a mite easier than Saffron did on account of he had something soft underneath to break his fall. She swore in Chinese and kicked him until he rolled off her.

They lay side by side on the river bed a moment, gasping for breath, before a bullet bounced off the baked mud in the gap between their bodies. Next moment they were both of them on their feet pressed against the sheer side of the river bed. "Gorram it!" Mal yelled, and Saffron flashed him her thigh again as drew his pistol.

She held it in her left hand, out of his reach, but it didn't seem she had much of an intent to use it on him: far more threatening targets on hand. Mal craned his head to see over to where Niska's people and the bunch of new folk were shooting at each other. Looked like they were counting a draw just now with a man down either side, though the tall fellow in charge of the second group was limping a little. Saffron craned too, raising the pistol and sending a shot across to wing Niska's pilot, causing a commotion among them all wondering how come they were getting shot at from a whole different quarter all a sudden.

Heard the gunfight heat back up as he ducked down again, dragging Saffron with him. "You want to tell me what the hell's going on now and who the heck is leading the gorram rescue party?"

She turned and batted her eyelashes up at him. "Couldn't you guess, Mal?" she said sweetly. "He's my husband."

***

Chapter 6

"Well, as if I couldn't have guessed that part," Mal griped. Fire from Niska's men peppered the river bed's opposing wall. "Tell me something I don't know."

"He's a freighter captain," Saffron smirked. "I'm cutting him in on the job." She snatched a glance up over the bank to see what was going on.

"Your latest idiot. Right, I get that. Where's his ship?"

"If I knew, do you think I'd still be here?" she snipped.

Mal broke off an incredulous burst of laughter. "You are something else," he said, jabbing a finger in her face. She slapped his hand away. He moved in with his other hand, catching her off-guard, and wrested his pistol back, shoving her off him as she tried to cling and her claws dug through his clothes into flesh with intent. "Well, now. Reckon I'm liking this situation a mite better. Anyone ever tell you, you make life a whole barrel of fun?"

She stuck her tongue out and gave him a right mean look, ignoring the firefight going on six feet above their heads, and a cry that sounded like it came from the group including her new husband - so no change with regard to the amount the whole 'to have and to hold' deal meant to her, then.

He backed off, keeping the pistol trained on Saffron, until he reached a dip in the bank where the edge had crumbled away, far enough from her he felt safe taking a peep over the top to gage the outcome of the latest round of bullets.

Which seemed to be that Saffron's better half was down and writhing in pain while his two buddies weren't moving much at all. Niska had one remaining lackey, just venturing out of cover as Mal watched, picking his way to the downed men with one eye on the spot Saffron had done her shooting from, before.

Mal aimed and fired, dropping him in his tracks, scrambled up the side of the bank and crossed to Eunice's hatch in several quick steps to level the gun at Niska.

The old bastard tried to duck away. Mal reached him and dragged him out of cover, keeping the pistol trained. Poked the weapon right in Niska's face and watched his hands slowly rise above his head. "Mister Reynolds, please," he began, with grandfatherly sincerity.

"What, you're thinking we should be civilised now?" Mal asked. "Ain't that a thing."

"Kill me and others will come," Niska said, but his voice held a tremor and there was fear clear in his face. His lackeys were down, and Niska... Niska was a frail old man. Mal felt his lips twist, wondered what his own face must look like. "My wife - my family - my business connections, they will never stop looking for you."

"And you'd be explaining to me just how that's s'posed to be any worse an option than knowing I got you on my case all keen to be finding out about my 'true self'?" He all but jammed the gun up the old man's nose.

"Not so," Niska stuttered. "No more - I will not. We are finished, you and I, yes?" He made as though to nod keenly, 'til the positioning of the pistol brought him to a re-think on that notion. "We are reasonable men, Mister Reynolds."

Mal cocked back the pistol. "Funny thing. You see, I ain't feeling in the least bit reasonable far as you're concerned. Could be it's the torture. Always did have that unseemly weakness for getting bogged down in grudges about the little things."

"I will pay you - compensation, yes - ?"

Mal made no effort to conceal his disgust. "Pay me with what? I'm thinking your credit ain't no good with me." He stepped back a couple paces, letting the pistol relax with a recalcitrant sort of a crunch, twisting back in his hand so the barrel pointed at the sky. He gave Niska a stony look, then tipped his head to indicate the long stretch of desert headed off into nowhere that followed the course of the dry river. "Run," he said.

"I--" Niska's gaze flickered over Mal's face and he apparently changed his mind on the protesting. Turned and started clambering over the uneven ground fast as a dried-up old carcass reasonably might, keeping glancing back over his shoulder as an extra drag on his pace.

Mal watched him a long moment, until a groan from Saffron's husband of the week drew him back to the fact he still had himself a situation here. Frowning at the distant running figure, he carefully levelled the pistol and fired; watched the figure falter and fall.

"Something tells me he earned that." Less of a smirk in her voice than he might have expected. He lowered the gun, turning to see Saffron a little way behind him, her gaze crossing the distance to the black huddle of Niska's corpse.

"Yeah. Well. I sure as hell ain't leaving that old bastard alive a second time," Mal murmured. Dragged his own eyes away from the black smudge on the pale sand again, seeing as how they were displaying a disturbing tendency for straying back to it. "You best look to your husband, woman, before he starts getting all jealous on the two of us."

He thought - could be wrong, after all, had been a strange sort of a day and none too easy on the nerves, but he did think he detected a faint crack in the performance; trace of a sigh, a grimace, a suggestion that inside was a person beginning to find the pretence tiresome. Then, Saffron exclaimed, "Oh!" and scrambled her way over to the fellow's side adding to that a, "Sweetie? Honey? Are you all right? Did they shoot you bad?" Mal's ears tuned her out as she knelt down and started up with cooing noises. He crossed instead to the other bodies lying about and checked them each by turn.

Niska's pilot was unconscious with a bullet scrape down the side of his skull and would most likely live without medical intervention so long as this area of Ezra didn't have any imported predators to finish him off while he dozed. After some pause, Mal dumped him just inside Eunice and sealed the doors. The rest of Niska's men were dead, as was one of Saffron's crew. Another was too far on his way to it, a hole in his chest and one in his thigh. He stirred and grabbed Mal's hand, jerky motions and none too lucid. "Help me... I can't..."

Mal patted his shoulder. "You'll be just fine, kid. Help's on its way already. You just relax and don't stretch yourself any." The lie came easy enough after Serenity Valley. He kept his grip on the youth's shoulder a moment, 'til he was gone.

"Shame," a pain-troubled voice said behind him, as he stirred himself and made to rise. "Good gun hand. Didn't make a fuss."

"Right," Mal responded, noncommittal. He stood and faced Saffron and the fellow she supported with her shoulder despite him being tall enough to make her look a delicate little toy. Combined with the huge bag she hefted, the weight looked like to keel her over and pin her to the ground.

"You're Reynolds," the fellow said carefully. "Her ex." Managed to make a show of glaring and pawing the ground despite the evident stress of his injury.

"No cause wasting perfectly good jealousy over me." Mal tossed him a grin and a slap on the arm that likely did him no favour, and cheerfully neglected to mention she and he never had gotten that divorce. "You two got my blessing - and if you ain't just the cutest gorram couple I ever did see." A quick mock-hug on his part smushed them both together and rocked their balance. "Say, what did happen to Fenro, by the by?"

Saffron glared at him covertly. "I think we need to be going, Lane sweetie, Mal - you know, before the law arrives all a-wondering what this commotion's been about?"

Mal nodded wisely. "Second thoughts, I guess. Too bad for Fenro. Still..." He clapped his hands together. "Where'd this ship of yours be, Lane?"

"Back this way." He gesture followed the river. "Ain't far."

"Best get moving, then. Say, I could carry that if you--"

"I'm fine!" Saffron snapped, tugging at the bag full of money. The question in her face was clearly as to who'd invited him along anyway, but with the only gun between them in his possession it went unasked. Mal didn't offer to take the husband off her hands.

Might not have been far, but it was clearly far enough for the luckless Lane. When Saffron set him down inside the ship's hold (a neat little Spacebug 35I, up-to-date cousin to the firefly class with a bit more flash and a lot less guts) he collapsed with a groan and stayed where he lay, all but out.

Saffron swore in Chinese and looked as though she might've liked to kick him, but the fact she abided spoke she still had use for him yet. She hit the comm. "Jamal? Need to get out of here double-quick time. Make for Capitol City or Murssen, whichever's less like to head us into Alliance traffic."

"Right away, Mrs Rudgard," a voice floated back.

Mal turned to her as the hiss of the comm cut out and the vibration of movement purred through the ship. "Mrs Rudgard? So you'd not be going by Saffron Reynolds these days?"

"Wouldn't you like to know," she said, narrow-eyed, hauling the bag off into a corner off the cargo deck and dumping it there. "Becky Rudgard," she added as she straightened, giving him a little curtsey for his troubles. Whipped off her little white cap with the kind of irritation hadn't realised she'd still been wearing it these past hours and flung that into the corner, too. "Sweetie, you look almost disappointed I'm not taking your name in vain."

He laughed. "Or maybe you're just disappointed that I ain't. I got no problem you disowning me... So, Lane Rudgard?" He gave her an assessing look and nodded smugly, sliding his gaze about the hold, which was a lot like Serenity's hold, then back to her. "And you chose him and this boat - hell, this whole gorram job - because?"

"They were convenient.... what? Did you expect me to say, 'Oh, Mal, you know why. You got under my skin. I can't keep myself away from you! I can't stand to live without you. Take me in your manly arms and...'" Ending on a snort, she tugged at her hair and squared her jaw. Brushed down her creased and dusty white tunic and levelled her gaze to his. "Now," she said, after a moment, cocking her head. "What do I do with you?"

Mal played with the gun in his hands. "I'll make it real simple for you. You can just give me my cut and send me on my way. I got no thoughts to linger."

She gave him an incredulous stare, but he could see the hint of a smile pondering taking over her lips. "Your cut?"

"Well, I'm figuring since I had such a key role in your plan I'm owed that much. You used me. Now pay up. I ain't greedy, a three-way split sits just fine with me. That leaves, let's see... the rest for you. Doubt you'll even miss it, looking at your haul there. 'Sides, ain't like the money's ever the point."

She smiled and took a step closer. "You do know me, Mal. Maybe better than anyone. I'll say that for you."

"The truth hurts," he conceded.

Her fingers hooked in his belt and he moved his gun up to tickle it under her chin.

She tutted. "Know what I know?" Fingers stilled, but not in retreat.

"What?" he asked, less than patiently, a little too aware of her hands.

Saffron leaned forward so the barrel scraped along her neck, and whispered up into his ear. "You're shooting blanks, baby. There's no bullets left in that gun."

'Fore he'd chance to come up with answer to that or make to test the theory, she'd rendered the point redundant with a twist and throw manoeuvre ended him with a kick in the head that turned out the lights like someone threw a switch.

***

Someone was making a clamour fit for raising the dead smack atop his head - in fact, gorram noise reverberated so loud he wasn't too sure they weren't in the honest-to-God act of setting about his head with a blunt instrument. For certain somebody had done just that not long since. As for the rest of him, he seemed to be an uncomfortable sort of twisted up that sent twinges and cramps through his body when he tried to move. Realised furthermore he seemed to be encountering floor on more sides than he rightly ought.

Another hammering crash inches over his head tore through his skull.

Had himself a moment of natural outright panic at the idea of being encased blind in the dark, striking out and shoving at the barriers that hemmed him in on all sides. The surface above his head moved fractionally, and then thumped back into place. There was an annoyed, muffled exclamation and the tiniest fast-extinguished flicker of light. Another crash. Then--

"Awake finally? Why I do swear, Malcolm Reynolds, you must be the laziest husband in this whole 'verse," came a familiar false drawl.

Mal fair roared with the realisation of just what was happening. "You lousy gorram bitch!" Braced himself as best he might and started to pound at the lid of the crate with intent. "If you don't open up this thing right now, I swear--"

"Oh, hush." He could hear the pout in her voice. The lid sagged inward with the application of weight. Crazy hellion had gone sat herself down on it, of all the... "Fair's fair, Mal. Don't worry, I'll see you posted back to that rustbucket little ship of yours. Speaking of which, you might want to lay off anything that could persuade me to send you via the scenic route. I'd imagine much over a day in there would start to get more than a mite uncomfy."

Mal pounded at the lid. "You rutting whore! Saffron, you let me out of this gorram box--!"

"Scenic route it is." Said it with a false sigh in her voice, and underneath an unruly amount of happy. "I said don't grouch so. You know, I could have found some garbage to toss in there to make the experience all the more complete. Lucky for you I'm not that petty. You should be glad."

"Saffron, you listen up!" Mal yelled, giving up on the lid. His twisted position in the crate didn't lend much leverage for pushing. He raised his lips to the seal around the lid and put his efforts into words instead. "You do this, I promise next time we meet I will put my hands on that pretty neck of yours and squeeze 'til you--"

Another bash cut him off, as she hammered down on the seal. He hadn't noticed her weight leave the lid - hell, maybe she was kneeled on top of it to work. "Don't be such a baby," she said. "This wouldn't be anything but poetic justice, sweetie. You just sit tight and you'll be back with your crew before you know it. Heck, I even dropped you your cut in there and some rations 'case you get caught up in the mail."

"Damn it!" Mal roared. "I came to rescue you, you lousy bitch!"

Her laughter leaked back to him. Since the seal was pretty firm in place, leastways far as he could tell running his hands around the edges blind, must be air coming in from somewhere else. He hoped so, anyway. He didn't think she'd let him suffocate slow, but it wasn't a matter he'd be willing to put money on. His hands, searching lower, found the shapes of a packet full of what felt like wads of paper, a couple of ration packets and a flask, and his pistol - empty of bullets.

"My big dumb hero," Saffron waxed lyrical, a veritable flutter in her voice. "Oh, please."

A softer sounded than the banging - mayhap she'd patted the top of the box. "I'll leave you now in the hands of the fine fellows of the Allied Postal Service. Plea with 'em all you want, but they've been bribed handsomely enough not to listen - and I wouldn't be trying to counter that by advertising you got money in there, you bein' helpless in a box and all. Between you and me, those boys don't exactly come across like model citizens."

"Screw you!" He threw all his strength into a surge against the lid that rocked the whole crate.

"I don't believe we ever got that far. Ours was a very frustrating marriage for me, sexually..." Her voice sounded distant, like she'd already turned and was walking away.

"Go to hell!" The crate fair leaped with his anger and near toppled, settling back upright with a crash that rattled his teeth.

"Honey, I would if I ever thought I'd get away from you there." Another more distant laugh. "I'll be in touch, Mal. Got a job for you and your crew to make that last little heist look like child's play. You stay faithful to me, now."

"I ain't married to you!" The time, the crate did tip, squashing him down on his face and contorting limbs ways they weren't never made to bend. He kept up a tirade of cussing while righting himself, and by the time he was in any fit state for listening again, he couldn't hear nothing at all. "Saffron?" he said cautiously, and louder: "Saffron!"

Silence made itself unwelcome as his sole response. "Gorram you, Saffron, you lousy fruitloop two-bit hooker, you get back here right now and ...Saffron? Saffron!"

***

Epilogue

...Was slipping out of an uncomfortable doze when the voices started to float through, muffled by the crate and the fog in his brain both. Started to be recognisably familiar, as opposed to those folks who'd for an indeterminable length of time paid no heed at all to having one uncommonly uppity and very noisy crate in their cargo complement.

"Might be it's something the captain's ordered," the sweetest voice in the whole damn 'verse said dubiously. "He ain't exactly been forthcoming with the rest of us of late."

"Honeybuns, all I'm saying is, why would someone mail us a box right now? Considering the timing, maybe we should prepare ourselves. Either against very large explosions or, you know... prepare mentally." His voice dropped so quiet it was almost impossible to catch that last.

"Oh!" The wail was speedily quenched, replaced by a more positive denial. "Cap'n's not dead, Zoe. Can't be. We all heard what happened to Niska, so that can't be it."

"We all know the cap'n should've been in touch 'fore now," was her only gruff response. "Ain't shaped like a coffin. You reckon they chopped him up small?"

"Jayne! Can't you see she's upset enough already? Kaylee, here--" Too much anxious in that voice, and not all over Kaylee.

"I'd suggest," that deep familiar voice of reason put in, "that we open the box."

"I'd have to concur. Especially if all this emotion is being wasted on an order of engine parts." Spoken with a certain acerbic and uncompromising edge, if mixed with a little too much naivete for true effectiveness.

"Not very comfortable." A solemn and dead-on assessment. "Not very comfortable at all."

Mal pounded on the side of the crate and raised his voice and yelled for all he was gorram worth. Last thing he wanted was for Jayne to be concluding the crate most like to be a bomb.

A flurry of disturbance travelled faintly to him from outside, most distinct among it Kaylee's gasp and Book's startled, "Oh, my." There was a crunch as someone set a wrench to the seal, and another as they hauled on it and popped the lid .

Mal launched himself for the opening, fell back, caught the lip, unbalanced the crate and dumped himself out onto Serenity's cargo deck in a painful, undignified heap.

Inara gasped behind him. Would've thought the damn woman should be used to menfolk falling at her feet by now, he thought uncharitably.

"It's all right," River said, crouching down on her haunches to peer at him in an intent sort of a way as he tried not to howl from the ache of movement and the pain of circulation returned to limbs too long twisted up the most part immobile. "I was in a box, too. Bad dreams."

"I didn't - that ain't - never you mind peeping in my head." Mal struggled 'round and managed to get to sitting, by which time Zoe was at his side to lend a hand with Kaylee, showing a mite more concerned relief and less smirk, hovering at her shoulder.

"Jesus, Mal," Jayne said, tugging at and peering into the upturned crate. "Gorram near spaced you."

"I know, I heard--" He took a lurching step and snatched the wrapped money away before Jayne could get too much into investigating it further. Kaylee clung onto his arm to keep his legs from giving way.

"What you got there?" Jayne asked, petulant. Mal ignored him and swung back 'round on Zoe, who had her arms folded, her back straight and her eyebrows raised, pinning him smack in the sights of a look lost in terrain between the counties of smug, annoyed and incredulous.

"While I hate to say I told you so..." she began.

"You love to say 'I told you so'," Mal shot back, cutting her off. "I'd consider it a kindness if in this case you'd not bother."

"Mal--" Wash began, seeming to be recovering power of speech and coming 'round quick from the camp of pessimistic grief to that of entertainment, but he checked himself. "I don't need to ask why you're in a box, do I?"

"No, I don't believe you do, and I'd consider it a kindness--"

"Check." A snort of laughter all but obliterated the word.

"Cap'n--" Gorram it, even Kaylee's expression was starting to crack. Mal's temper snapped.

"I can see we're all very amused. But if I could just have your attention in amongst all this crazy fun--" He dipped his hand in the packet of cash and drew out the topmost bills, waving them about in front of a few speedily-perked-up noses. "This little venture, ill-advised or no, seems to have turned us a tidy bit of profit."

Jayne's face straightened out on the instant.

Inara's brows were concertinaed together, but she managed to dredge up a degree of sobriety. "We've been trying to find... Are you hurt, Mal? Was there torture?"

"No, there was no torture. No, I was not hurt. Thank you, Inara. I have, however, spent the best part of the last twenty-four hours in a gorram box, which sad-to-say has singularly failed in improving my very bad mood." He dumped the packet into Zoe's hands. "Here, you split that. Now, if you don't mind, I'll be getting myself a shave and a change, and leave you all to indulge in the inevitable incessant sniggering upon the irony of this here situation which we ain't mentioning again in my hearing."

"Sir. Yes, sir." Grin not even bothering to lurk beneath Wash's voice.

"Wash... need to plot a course to pick up my shuttle. Bridge in ten," he returned.

"Wait, Mal, what did Saffron--?" Inara began.

"Not talking about Saffron." Mal didn't bother glancing back over his shoulder as he took the steps quick as his stiff legs might.

Jayne grunted; there was the grating sound of something heavy being moved and he shouted, still with undue seriousness, "Hey, Mal! What do you want we should do with the box?"

"Not talking about the box." He reached the top of the steps and turned up along the walkway.

"We were worried!" Kaylee's voice rose up with an earnest sort of effort.

He headed through to the kitchen without response. His internal count on the seconds anticipated - dead on target - the moment when the muffled laughter broke free behind him.

END

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