Persephone Stopover

Chapter 1

"What kind of a client invites his smugglers to dinner?" Wash asked, swinging back in his pilot's chair, a laugh in his voice.

"Oh, you remember Sir Warwick Harrow," Mal said, stepping back from the communicator as it fizzled to static. "Interesting sort of a fellow. Got us some cows eight months or so back, if you recall. Also got me a mighty fine collection of stab wounds last time we were arranging business." He folded his arms and leaned back against the lockers.

"Ah." Wash's chin lifted knowingly and he flicked a finger to point it at Mal. "Check. That one. The cows, I definitely remember."

"And the stab wounds."

"As if we could forget." Wash frowned. "So he's got, what, more cows for us? I thought after last time we weren't doing that any more."

"Sad to say, we need the money. We're still hurting from Icarus and our last job didn't begin to start covering. So. Back to some good old-fashioned crime for a while." Mal clapped his hands together and pushed off from the locker, galvanising himself to action. He flashed a tight smile. "Best find me my favourite date... can't wait to see her light up when I tell her she's an excuse to be wearing that cake of hers again. Hope you got a suit packed somewhere," he added, heading down the steps to the main part of the ship.

"Wait! Wha - ?"

Mal turned on the top step. "Man said 'bring the crew along'. Guess that means you and Zoe both get chance to show off your fancy table manners. Come on, Wash - compared to Kaylee and my own self, why, the two of you are positively cultured. Shouldn't be any great trial. And the food has to be better'n what we've been eating here these past weeks, you can't deny."

"Well, that's true," Wash allowed.

"See if Inara can't lend Zoe a slinky dress." Mal tossed the suggestion over his shoulder halfway down the steps.

Book, Jayne and Inara were in the dining area. "What's this I'm hearing about real food and Zoe wearin' a slinky dress?" Jayne asked - overeagerly - as he walked in.

"Got a client. Warwick Harrow. We know him - "

Jayne was nodding already. "Fellow with the cows. Thought we wasn't doing them again?"

"Well, we are," Mal emphasized, annoyed. "Man's a good client and we can use the money. Just have to get used to the place smelling a mite fresh for a few weeks, is all."

Inara wrinkled her nose. "And the talk of fine food and dresses? You'll forgive me if that makes me start feeling concerned, in light of what happened last time. The last thing I want from this stopover is to be helping you back to Serenity while you're bleeding all over me again."

"Absolutely no swordfights," Mal promised. "Just a quiet dinner 'tween friends and partners in crime and misdemeanours."

Inara practically choked on a sip of her drink as she caught up. "Sir Warwick Harrow invited you to dinner?" she asked with a substantial amount of plain disbelief.

"And why not?" he challenged. "Got along plenty well enough in the past. Business partners, you might say." He hooked his thumbs in his suspender straps and smirked at her. "Oh, I can well imagine what you might say, Inara, 'bout him being some lofty Lord and ourselves mere lowly 'petty crooks', but... man's got a job for us. Told us he'd iron out all the fine details over dinner. Tonight. Guess that's just the way his kind of gent is used to doing business." The ship wobbled slightly as she entered atmosphere and Mal looked up out of the small windows in the ceiling at the colour of the sky. "Believe it's in the region of four in the afternoon right now, so there'll be a bit of space lag. No matter."

"I'll get myself ready," Jayne said, rising eagerly.

Mal stared him down, eyebrows raised. "You'll be staying right here."

Jayne made a long noise of disappointment in the back of his throat. "That ain't fair, Mal."

"Since when was 'fair' ever an issue on my boat? Harrow might've said to bring the crew but I ain't stupid and I'm reckoning what we got here is more'n he's figuring to contend with. Seeing as how we've to do business with the fellow, I'm taking those crew technically qualify as crew and can manage rudimentary table manners - and don't look at me like that. Folks who're spoilin' to get taken out someplace nice public shouldn't ought to be those exercising their body's less savoury functions around the mealtable on a regular basis."

Book, behind the counter in the background, suppressed a laugh. Jayne sulked, slumping back down in his chair to another mumble of, "Ain't fair."

Mal turned to Inara. Corner of her mouth had turned up, amused. "Inara, I - "

"I have a client," she said quickly.

"Well. That's nice for all of us, then. Whole lot of us making some profit out of this trip dirtside. Exactly what I like to see. Long as it ain't our old friend Ath, leastways. But as I was about to say, if you can spare the time 'fore you leave to get Miss Kaylee and our first mate spruced up and decked out fine..." He frowned, breaking off, and studied her face closely while he asked, "It's not Atherton, is it?"

"Mal... Since, thanks to your intervention, Atherton Wing threatened to mutilate me if he ever saw me again, I'd consider it unlikely I'll be accepting any proposals to spend intimate time with the man for the near future."

"Uh." Mal drew his chin up and jerked it in somewhat of a nod, trying to exude 'satisfied'. "Good. That'd be all right then... So who is your client?"

"It's private," she stressed.

"Right." Awkwardly, he looked round 'til he remembered something he ought do and focused his attention on Book. "Shepherd, I'm afraid..."

"That's quite all right," the preacher reassured with a smile. "I know I don't really qualify as one of your crew."

Mal grunted. "Need you here to stop Simon and Jayne killing each other. Reckon you can pull it off?"

"Mal..." Jayne grumbled.

"Might take more than a few prayers," Book allowed, throwing Jayne a conciliatory look that soothed the merc's pride. "We'll all be fine," he concluded. "But... if I had your past record with the society of this planet, captain? I'd be worrying about my own skin."

***

"Sure you're gonna stay in that thing, 'little' Kaylee?" Jayne asked, with a laugh that could definitely be described as 'lascivious'.

She punched him on the arm. "Hey! Ain't my fault the other one got ruined. This is... it looks okay." Her eyes beseeched Inara for backup.

"You look adorable," the companion said, glaring at Jayne.

"What... happened to the other one?" Simon dared to ask. He felt, as always, removed from the preparations taking place around him. Those who were going to dinner were readying themselves to leave; the captain in a dinner jacket and a vest that were by now looking rather tired, bloodstains and some careful mending still visible upon close inspection; Kaylee squeezed into one of Inara's old dresses, which strained to accommodate her curves.

Kaylee pulled a sad face. "Poor thing got caught when a circuit board I was working on sparked off. Looks fine all hung up there in my room, but it's got these burnt brown speckles up one side you don't see - no good anymore for wearing. Still, it ain't like it's an easy thing to sit down in anyway." She smoothed her hand down the gold fabric. It had red trimmings so dark they were almost a rusty brown. She looked pretty. And... 'voluptuous', Simon decided, was probably the word.

"Just... don't breathe out too hard," Inara advised, wincing slightly. "And try not to eat too much."

"Futile words if ever I did hear any," Mal commented, and softened his own words with a flash of a broad smile.

"You'll be fine," Book said.

Simon took a breath. "You look very nice," he told her. It probably came out somewhat... 'stiffly', as she'd say.

"Thank you, Simon." She rewarded him with a grin, and looked at Mal with intent. "Can't he come? He's got the right get-up if any of us do."

The puppy-dog eyes were a formidable weapon in Kaylee's arsenal, but somehow the captain resisted. "Can't leave the boat on Persephone. Him and his sister both. You know that. Law here knows of them too well."

"It ain't fair."

"I hear that word again tonight and there won't be nobody going to any fancy dinners." Mal settled his gaze on Simon more with an air of rote as he said, "No leaving the ship." Of course, the captain understood that the last thing he'd want was to increase River's danger of recapture.

Thinking of her was all the reminder his brain needed to focus on her whereabouts; instinct by now long ingrained. She was standing by Kaylee, the expression on her face intent as she looked down. As he watched, River reached out and touched her fingertips to Kaylee's gold dress - so lightly Kaylee didn't even notice - and frowned down at her own, which was somebody's discard and sagged in the places it was too big, as though she was remembering when fine clothes had been the stuff of everyday. They had nothing of hers anymore, all left at home or at the Academy. He'd brought her out naked in a box. With all that had been going on with her otherwise, it was the first time it really occurred to him that might sadden her.

Simon edged forward quickly, caught her hand and squeezed it, and he pulled her back so she wasn't crowding Kaylee quite so much. "Next time we have money," he promised.

"It's only a skin," River said dourly, frowning at him, her eyes half-hidden by lowered lashes. "You can shed it. Holds you together... shapes and fits."

He wasn't sure if that observation meant she didn't want a new dress.

"You know, you're right," Mal observed, who Simon hadn't even realised was paying attention to the exchange. "Girl needs clothes bad. Make sure we see to it, next amenable planet she's okay to leave the boat."

"Y-yes. Thank you."

Wash and Zoe chose that moment to make their entrance, hand in hand down the steps. Mal's jaw worked a moment before he accused, "You've been holding out on us."

The two of them looked the part far more than Mal or Kaylee. It seemed that at some point in their travels they'd picked up well-tailored clothes that could have been made for just such an occasion; Wash in a suit that flattered his build, Zoe in a long green dress that clung to her figure and was simply astonishing, on a woman Simon was used to seeing in work clothes stained with sweat and dust.

Still, it was Kaylee in ill-fitting gold that his eyes returned to. He even found himself resenting Mal the opportunity to wear her on his arm.

"Where'd you get the threads," Jayne asked Zoe, after he'd finished picking his jaw up off the floor.

"Wouldn't you like to know."

"Well... yeah." His eyes narrowed on Wash.

"My husband don't bend under pressure." Zoe's elbow dug into his side.

Wash shifted and announced, robotically, "I will never talk. There isn't anything you can threaten me with that rivals what will happen if I do."

"See?" Zoe said.

River dragged her hand from Simon's and walked away, making almost a dance of ascending the steps to the rhythm of a slow, invisible tune - and he hesitated, torn between following her and staying around to see the dinner-goers off. So he missed whatever it was that Jayne said next, only turned around in the midst of everyone laughing with, as usual, little idea as to the nature of the joke.

"Time to go," said the captain, clapping his hands and rubbing them together. "Wouldn't want to keep a bona-fide lord waiting, now, would we?"

"Take care, captain," Book said, mischief in his eyes, and Inara opened her mouth to add to that.

Mal said, "When are you people gonna let that drop?" He held out his arm to Kaylee, who surreptitiously checked out his rear profile, scrunched up her mouth in thought a moment, then nodded approval before she accepted, all of which went entirely over the captain's head due to the fact he was still glaring at Inara. "I'm letting this one defend her own honour if it turns out she needs to. Such as it is." His smirk disappeared into a half-laugh, half-gasp as she vengefully prodded him in the ribs.

"Just don't come back full of holes, and we'll be happy," Inara said dryly.

Simon looked around vaguely, feeling an expectation he say something and having, as usual, little to contribute. "Good luck with the business deal," he settled on.

Mal laid out a grateful open palm toward him in a 'see?' gesture. "Least someone cares to take seriously the key point behind all this inanity."

Wash and Zoe hung decoratively onto each other, an air of excitement creeping through despite the compulsory nature of the occasion. Jayne had remembered that he was sulking, and applied himself to it again with determination, but Simon joined Book and Inara in seeing the party off as they headed down the ramp.

Kaylee swung on Mal's arm like he was a piece of street furniture, inclining herself backward to wave coquettishly to Simon as she was all but hauled away.

***

"Ain't it keen?" Kaylee said excitedly, practically bouncing in her seat. "Little thing's half spaceship and half ground car. I ain't never been in one before, but I read up on them on the cortex." She leaned forward and tapped the chauffeur on the shoulder. "Say, how high've you taken this sweetie? I hear they can't break atmo, but with a couple modifications you can near skim the upper atmosphere."

"Kaylee." Mal caught her shoulders and drew her back to her seat with a muted laugh. "Let the man do his job. I ain't too keen on finding out how these things feel hitting the dirt."

Wash, not completely without interest himself, held his wife's hand in his lap and said to no-one in particular, "Looks to have a decent manoeuvrability to her," and subsided, aware of Zoe rolling her eyes in his peripheral vision.

"Persephone looks real pretty from up here," she said, with a certain determination. "You don't get to see all this coming in the landing paths over the docks."

"Man must have some money to afford the flight permit," Wash agreed. "Most folks'd buy something like this and never fly it more than ground- or low-level. Overpopulated rock like Persephone doesn't much like crowding its skies. Permit costs more than the neat little ship." And he was aware of Zoe rolling her eyes again, and shooting them imploringly over his head and Kaylee's to the captain.

Mal remarked, "I'm getting to thinking that maybe Jayne wouldn't have prettied up so bad after all as a date. 'Course, he wouldn't have fit into any of Inara's frocks..."

"I know you don't mean that, cap'n," Kaylee said sweetly, standing up in her seat - making the whole mini-ship wobble in the air - to plant a kiss on his brow.

"Kaylee - " They all spoke in unison, and the transport wobbled again as everyone reached across the pull her back down.

"All of you behave," Mal said. "Wouldn't be much of a thanks to Harrow for having us chauffeured from the docks, now, if we crashed his dinky hovering toy car."

Which did the trick well enough, even if it perhaps didn't make a lifelong friend out of the chauffeur. The man offered with a certain sour inflection, "It may be of interest to you, sir, that we're coming in over Sir Warwick's estates now."

Wash leaned over Zoe to join her looking out the window. The ground below ceased abruptly to be the busy industrial clamour of Persephone's main spacefaring metropolis, ceding to an expanse of green at the line of a high wall that became clearer as they lost height. Fields dotted with livestock - speckled cattle, the fluffy white blobs of sheep, and a few distant brown smears that might be horses. An avenue of trees led inwards to the main house, and close by, a flat grey area that could only be a landing pad.

"Wow," Kaylee said. "That's a whole big chunk of prime land cut out the middle of the city. I've even walked down that street there, and never knew all this was just over the wall..." She smiled up at Mal. "Few more weeks of cows is looking more shiny all the time. Ain't that right, cap'n?"

"I got no objection to cattle." Mal was staring back in the direction of the wall as they came in to land. "Mighty big wall. I'm thinking this place has itself some major security and defences, too." Wash turned to him a puzzled look. He was sounding, of all things, nervous.

Kaylee also caught it. "Oh, but Sir Warwick's one of our favourite customers, right? Apart from you getting stabbed last time, I mean. Got nothing to be worrying 'bout stuff like security for."

"Captain's just allergic to the smell of this much money," Zoe observed. "It'll pass. Let the fine beverages come out, and it'll pass real quick."

Wash joined in the laughter, though it did strike him - just a little, at the back of his mind - that it wasn't often all of them got this high on life without getting kicked in the tail, state of their luck. "There's the man himself," he said, pointing out to the edge of the landing pad as the engine's soft purr died to silence, recognising mainly the red sash from the second-hand descriptions. The man himself was squat and maybe a bit sour looking, and didn't seem too much like a fancy lord.

Mal figured out how to unlock the hatch that swung up the whole of the roof from the inside, confounding the chauffeur just as he was coming around, and jumped down oblivious to the set of steps that hadn't yet been set in place. Wash suppressed a smile. The captain was a fish out of water in these environs if ever there was one. Still, he made a graceful enough show of picking up and lifting Kaylee down after him, leaving Wash and Zoe to wait patiently for the chauffeur and the steps while he strode out toward the squat man wearing the sash.

Who in turn approached to meet him half-way, where their hands clasped easily in greeting. So... maybe the captain wasn't doing so badly after all.

"Captain Reynolds." The sour man cracked a smile that had a lot of cunning but a measure of warmth, and Wash squinted, surprised by what he was seeing, detecting a certain likeness of spirit between the two men.

"Sir Warwick." Mal even managed to tip his head slightly in a deferential greeting without a note of rebellion. "How're you doing? Sure is a fine place you got here... and mighty good of you to invite all of us over, too, might I say... My engineer Kaylee here, you've already met..." He set his hands on her shoulders, presenting her, then turned and beckoned Zoe and Wash closer. "This here's my first mate, Zoe." Harrow took her hand and bowed deeply to kiss it, thus proving the powerful innate magic of the Green Slinky Dress, picked up in the more profitable times just after the raid on Ariel and saved for nights in out of sight of the rest of the crew, and most particularly out of sight of Jayne. "And my pilot Wash."

Wash inclined his head awkwardly, darting a worried glance sideways to Zoe, where she stroked her fingers over the hand that had been kissed, a flattered smile on her face. And... yes, he couldn't help but feel the Green Slinky Dress had powers too dangerous and potent to be loosed on the unsuspecting world at large. He'd been dead set against it, he would say, if it came to violence. He'd all but begged her to borrow something from Inara instead.

"Now we're all introduced," Harrow said, with a slightly arch, gruff amusement Wash suspected was a permanent part of his persona, "Let me show you inside. Everything's ready and waiting."

"Lead on," said Mal, with an easy grin.

***

It wasn't the noise. Really, that was too dull to hear until right up close. It was the vibration, like the noise was reverberating right the way around Serenity's hull and making the air buzz inside his eardrums. Jayne scowled at the door, listening to the faint hammering and pondering on the situation for all of a minute 'fore he yanked it back, sidestepped, brought his hand down on a descending arm, tugged and threw, and slammed the door back closed again. He leaned on it and glowered down at Badger, while outside Badger's flunkies started hammering with fists and gun butts and other things somewhat less effective 'gainst Serenity's tough skin even than the wrench. Speaking of which...

Jayne took a couple of steps to bring his foot down on the item in question before Badger could reach it. "Now, this here's an interesting situation," he observed.

Badger looked up and pulled a quick face, then collected himself, picked up that self from the floor and brushed it down; took off his hat to straighten it out and then jammed it back onto his head as he stood straight. He set his jaw and faced off against Jayne as though he was about a foot taller, not to mention wider, than the skinny rat-bastard he was. "Want to speak to that captain of yours. Ah-ah - you're going to tell me he ain't here. Know how I know that?" He tapped the side of his head with an index finger. "'Cause Badger knows when his so-called business colleagues have been going behind his back, that's how."

"Huh," Jayne grunted, rolling his head to one side.

Badger's expression turned mighty sour. "Warwick Harrow," he snapped. "That's my deal. I set it up, didn't I? Arranged the introductions. Now your Captain Reynolds is trying to cut me out. I hear things, see? Got contacts. I know he's set up some meeting with Harrow himself, to which I ain't invited."

"You ain't the only one." Jayne snorted, drew back his leg and kicked the wrench into a corner, out of sight among a mess of crates. It was echoed by another crash quick after, and he frowned uneasily at the door.

"Oh, and that - " Badger turned aside and flipped his hat a few times in the air. Nonchalantly. "Suggest you let my people in before they start trying to blast down that door."

Weighing how pissed Mal would be about Badger's people getting themselves cosy on board his ship again against yet more bodywork repairs pulled up a clear winner. Jayne snorted but hauled open the door. A couple of scruffy henchmen fell through.

"That's grand." The hat stopped its dance in the air, retreating to his head accompanied by a satisfied nod. "Now we can talk civil. Where's that pretty first mate?"

"She ain't here, neither. I'm in rutting charge. You got a piece to speak, speak it to me."

"Fine." A mocking challenge to the word. "So why don't you tell me how it is that your captain's trying to cut me out of this perfectly smooth deal we got going with Harrow?"

Jayne shrugged. "I dunno. Ain't like he ever tells any of us anything anyway."

Badger rolled his eyes. "What gorram use are you, then?"

"Generally, I kills things." He flexed his arm with a smirk, ignoring the flunkies' guns as they levelled. "Cap'n won't be back 'til late. Got a dinner date. Took those as had rutting table manners." He smiled, showing his teeth. "Y'can wait if that's what you want. Sure Mal's just itching to have that chat with you, anyhow."

A laugh bubbled down from somewhere overhead. Jayne turned sharply and looked up to see River sitting on the top steps leading down from the near walkway, her knees bent up, the oversize dress stretched tight over them, with its end flopping down long past her feet.

"Just what you think you're laughing at?"

The girl said earnestly, "Don't worry. You wouldn't get the joke."

Which apparently made it Badger's cue to laugh. Fellow was looking all sorts of interested in River. As she turned her eyes to his and curled her lips into a smile, his laugh dried up and he pulled off his hat, fingers squeezing around its brim, crushing it against his chest as he gave an awkward little bow. "Remember you, girly," he said, sounding hoarse all of a sudden. "Didn't expect to be seeing you again. Thought you was just a passenger on this wreck."

"We're all passengers," River said with something of a wicked gleam. Her accent had changed to match his, and Jayne remembered last time. An odd thing, but then they hadn't known the half of what they did now, 'bout what the government had made her capable of. "Just there's some as knows it better than others. Some knows what journey they're on and some don't. I'm thinking I know which you be." She leaned her head forward keenly and winked.

"Oh, no." Badger had got himself one hell of a nervous stammer there. "Won't catch me out like that this time. I know you ain't from the Colony."

"You don't know where I'm from, though," she said, in her own voice. "You don't know which is real, or... you can't be sure." She stood, flattening out her dress with tugs of fists clawed tight, and it seemed as though Badger wasn't the only one harbouring a little tension. She slowly made her way down the steps, that smile furtively creeping around the edge of her expression, manifesting in odd glimpses and flashes.

"Uh-uh," Jayne muttered under his breath. "Ruttin' crazy girl..." Where was the useless gorram doctor when ever he was needed to keep his insane sib in check? Hell, where was the gorram preacher? Far as he was concerned, only one he didn't want to have here dealing with this situation was Jayne Cobb.

"Pleasure to meet you," River said in Badger's accent, holding out her hand.

Badger didn't seem to know what to do with his hat. Fumbling, he stuck it on his head. When he took River's hand and leaned down to touch his lips to it, he had to clutch at the hat to stop it tumbling right off. Embarrassed, he straightened, smiled determinedly, hand still holding his hat in place, 'parently forgotten in the moment. "A pleasure." Jayne snorted and got a sideways glare for his trouble. "A real pleasure, miss."

River was still staring quizzically at her hand. She lifted it up and examined it at all angles in the light. When she brought it down again, it was to reach for Badger. Jayne winced and could only watch out of one eye, wishing he'd closed both, as the crazy girl returned the favour. "Awww... she's gonna have to disinfect that mouth somethin' diabolical," he groaned.

"Will you shut up?" Badger swung around on him. "We're having us a moment here." He turned back to River, who had her hand to her lips - hell, maybe the girl was gonna puke. Jayne backed off a way. "What's your name, love?"

"Wouldn't you like to know," she responded, conspiratorial.

He chuckled. "Woman of mystery, eh?"

"A few." She was speaking normal again. Badger was pretty lucky to have caught her on a less-crazy day. 'Course, if she was screaming, throwing things and cutting folks up, it might put paid to a few of those sexual fantasies. Or maybe not. Never could be sure what was gonna float a fellow's boat.

"Well, they call me Badger." The man pointed at himself. "Not my real name, 'course. There's not so many as knows that. But I'll tell you what - anytime you want to share yours, I'll start considerin' showing mine." He grinned.

"Think I'm coming all over tearful, the two of you findin' each other has moved me so," Jayne sneered. "Hell, she's stark crazy, you're a ruttin' lowlife snake... prob'ly a match made in Heaven."

"I told you to quit butting in," Badger began irritably, then seemed to notice his men still hanging around getting the whole show, and pulled on his lapels with a sudden rush to reclaim his businesslike air, such as it was. He tipped his head to River and said to Jayne, "Your captain's over at Harrow's right now, is he?"

Getting rid of the fellow and packing the crazy girl back off to her brother to be decontaminated seemed a hella good idea to Jayne right them. "That's right."

Badger nodded. "Good. Then I'm thinking we'll go join them. Since we're all of us here those who've been unfairly left out of proceedings." He looked around them all and smiled smugly.

"Join them?" Jayne started to ask. And: "...'We'?"

"That would be the pronoun I used." His jerked his head and the flunkies levelled their guns. Jayne thought about the nearest gun, which happened to be in his boot, and didn't reach for it.

"Sure. Fine by me. Hell, I wanted to go to begin with." He eyed between Badger and the flunkies and River, and said to the latter, "You - get," pointing back up the stairs. "Go pester your gorram brother."

"Oh, no..." The hand that patted his shoulder almost earned itself a handful of broken fingers 'fore the flunkies came to attention again. "What you're not getting here - when I say 'we', I'm thinking the lady deserves an escort to a fine dinner much as any of us." He let go of Jayne's shoulder to hold out his arm for River.

Jayne held his breath, waiting on River doing something crazy, or at the very least telling the man where to get off, and maybe if they were real lucky combining the two and stabbing him through the eye with the nearest sharp instrument. 'Stead, the girl just asked, "We're going to the party?"

Badger's smug smile near split his face in two. "Yes, we are."

Damn crazy girl took his arm and accepted his escort cool as could be.

***

Chapter 2

"...So my point, Captain Reynolds, is that I will not conduct my affairs like a criminal, no matter that they may... bend the law a little. If we are to be continuing this arrangement, I see no reason it can't be conducted as any honest business, in civilised fashion." Sir Warwick halted several feet from the big, secure gate to look enquiringly at Mal, awaiting his response.

The captain had his head to the ground and his lips moving fractionally, for the briefest of moments, as they'd sometimes do when he was considering. He raised his head, and quirked his mouth into a smile. "I'll freely admit, it ain't the way we're used to doing things - heck, that part you can probably tell - but I'm coming 'round to your point of view fast, Sir Warwick. Hell of a spread you put on, and I doubt it'll get you any objection from me and mine."

Kaylee managed to hold back a cheer and quick burst of applause, telling herself that was prob'ly the very nice wines and the after-dinner liquors talking. Cap'n hadn't hit anyone this time, so she could see it was her own clear duty not to do anything to embarrass them likewise. Falling over would probably count, she figured, and hung dutifully onto the captain's arm.

"You say you'll be on Persephone another two days for re-supplying?" Sir Warwick asked, clasping his hand to Mal's elbow, and the captain nodded. "Then I'll have my goods over to your ship the day after tomorrow, and I hope we can do business again, Captain Reynolds."

"'Mal'. And we surely will, Sir Warwick." The two men shook hands warmly.

"Are you sure you want to make your way back on foot?" their host asked, gesturing to a uniformed security man who stood by to open the gate - it slid aside real smooth and silent, proof that someone was keeping its mechanisms in tidy shape. "I can always have Edward bring the car back around."

Mal shook his head, wearing a contented little smile and maybe a bit too oblivious to how the rest of them might not feel so much like a long walk across town in the fading light with the food and drink still settling on them. "No. Ain't far - 'sides, little Kaylee here already near assaulted your driver on the way in, and that was sober. Best we walk."

"Hey! Mean ol' tyrant..." But Mal was grinning, and it was hard to be angry with the captain when he truly was happy, it being such a rare occurrence and all.

A round of parting nods exchanged, and then the gate was sliding closed behind them, cutting from view Sir Warwick and his pretty home and pretty chunk of the world, leaving them standing on a boring old street feeling out of place in their finery. Kaylee was aware of Inara's gold dress straining its seams. That warning about not eating too much hadn't held too much sway. Still, how could it have, with the dried up protein mixes they'd been living off the past weeks? Things were tighter than they'd been in a long time - since the time right before Simon first came on board, maybe.

But they were looking up.

Poor Simon, she thought, crestfallen again at the reminder. Left on Serenity to dine on the same old same old...

"We need more clients like that one," Zoe announced as they began to walk slowly down the street, hugging her arms over her chest to ward off the cold of Persephone's approaching night.

Wash relinquished her arm a moment while he took off his jacket and draped it across her shoulders. She smiled at him and they held each other close as they continued walking, and Wash backed her up after a moment, prodding Mal with, "She's right, you know, captain. Few more like him and we'd be on our way. Living in the lap of luxury... Now, just where do we find 'em?"

"Worth a few more swordfights even, I'd say," Zoe remarked with a wicked gleam of humour.

"If you're volunteerin' to be the one stuck full of holes next time," Mal said amicably.

"Oh, but you do the whole gallantry thing so nice." Kaylee swung on his arm. "And besides, it gives Inara another excuse to fuss over you, you know..." Her laughter died in her throat as she felt him tense. She might not have noticed if she hadn't been clinging to him so; the only outward sign he gave was a slight tightening of the lines around his mouth.

"I'm sure Inara has better things to do," he only said. And quieter, almost a mutter, "Paying clients, f'r example."

Kaylee punched his arm. "Now that's just mean. Would have thought, seeing as how she saved all our bacon not so long since, you'd find it even in your stony old heart to stop bein' so mean 'bout how she earns her livin'."

"I am not being mean," he protested; acres of wounded innocence. "Just making a statement of fact, is all. Inara's got better things to be doing than doctoring me, an' I got better things to be doing than getting stuck full of holes to need doctoring in the first place, and besides... Haven't I told you enough, that ain't happening again. Once. There was one swordfight. Not like I've ever made a habit of them nor ever will. Why is it everyone's so mad to be making an issue out of this?"

"Well, as social faux pas' go, it was a fairly spectacular one, Mal, " Wash put in, commiserating. "I - "

But the cap'n was squinting off into the distance, over toward a group of folks who'd just rounded a corner and were headed right their way.

Kaylee did a double-take. "Is that Jayne? Thought he weren't meant to come to join us."

"So it is." Mal dropped her arm and let his hand drift to the gun he wore at his hip, fine clothes or no. "Looks like... that's Badger with him? Hell." His steps sped up, and Kaylee necessarily got dragged along too, since she couldn't keep her balance alone. Behind her, Zoe and Wash had separated, though Zoe was smoothing her hands down her empty sides in frustration and looking as though she sore missed a gun of her own.

"Badger," Mal greeted loudly as they closed in. "Needed to talk to you - " He broke off, a cough catching at the back of his throat.

Kaylee blinked a moment, 'fore she saw what he'd seen too.

She hadn't noticed at once because the woman on Badger's arm didn't hold herself like River and didn't walk like River, a haughty confidence replacing that fuzzy distance and distraction the girl always had about her.

"What the niao shi de guay is going on here?" the captain demanded angrily, encapsulating the situation with his own particular brand of poetry.

***

One moment he was all set to haul Badger from whatever lame-brained, paranoid conclusion he'd gone and jumped to, the next a complete change of gear... his glare went straight to Jayne. "She don't leave the boat on Persephone." He jabbed a finger toward River.

"Ah. Captain Reynolds - " Badger began, smug.

River, swinging on the runt's arm in a fashion almost aping Kaylee, overrode him with a laugh and a smile. Her voice fair bubbled as she said, "I'm coming to the party. Look, I found an escort."

Mal ditched Kaylee on Wash's arm, figuring this here might be a situation to call on his full attention. "Dinner's finished, girl, and I can't say much for your taste - " He turned back on Jayne. "What... is River doing with Badger?" He hushed his voice, to no particular end. "This some feng le game?"

Jayne shuddered. "I sure hope so."

"Oy," Badger said, slapping at Mal's hand as he reached to pull River away. The move was backed by the swing of guns at either side. "Forget the gorram girl, Reynolds? She wanted to come... and it ain't no wonder, you keepin' her practically a prisoner in that tatty rustbucket. Reckon you could afford to ease up that military discipline o' yours on your crew, 'sarge'."

"Badger, you're an idiot. You have no idea - "

"And you're a gorram sneak. Thought you was above all that - a man of honour, right? - I did. Now you're going behind my back, trying to cut me out of a deal you wouldn't have been able to get near if it hadn't been for me."

"We've just been fine-tuning a few de - no, forget the damn deal." River there was standing in the middle of the gorram street while they were jawing. "We have to - "

"Not a chance. Fine-tuning? Likely bloody story. I'm guessing you found yourself another buyer out on one of them gorram moons at the arse end of the border that you like so much."

Mal was keenly aware of tempers getting no better and two guns still on him. He and Jayne were no closer to being in a position to draw without getting shot. River was still laughing on Badger's arm. "We were having dinner, Badger. You weren't invited on account of how Sir Warwick can't stand you. We ain't trying to cut you out of anything. You'll get your cut. Dong ma?"

"That's a..." Badger made a swift survey of the faces watching - of Kaylee, Wash and Zoe in their pretty formal dress, Kaylee barely standing - and his eyes widened slightly 'fore his anger did a quick turnabout. "You're having dinner with Sir Warwick now?"

"Seem to recall it was your doing in seeing to it I had me a social calendar in the first place." He glowered at River, who smiled innocently back, and wondered how gorram much did it take to get the point across to a girl supposed to be able to read minds that she wasn't precisely helping a situation. "I'll admit to a certain amount of surprise my own self, but I guess that's just the way the fellow's accustomed to doin' business, and who am I to argue with that? Hell, you getting me into that fancy ball probably gave him all kinds of twisted a first impression from the get-go. I barely recognise me like this." He tugged at a black lapel.

Going by Badger's face, the pint-sized crime lord was about ready to combust, but a flurry of conflicting expressions came up at the last with forced amiability. "Fine," he said carefully. "That's why I brought you into this, after all. Deal with Harrow. Good idea of mine. Knew he'd take a shine to you. Just you... make sure and keep me updated, all right? No more misunderstandings." A swift gesture saw the guns relaxed.

Mal had no intention of following suit just yet. "Hope you're not thinking of absconding with any of my crew," he said, looking pointedly at River.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Badger said. "Mind, it does strike me I promised the lady dinner. Wouldn't do to disappoint. I can be a gentleman, too, see?"

Kaylee drew in a breath. Zoe stepped forward. "You're going to have to live with a little disappointment yourself. She isn't going with you... Come on, River, honey." She held out her hand. River's smile finally faded as she stared down at it wordlessly.

"Now, hold up a moment here. What kind of a man do you take me for?" Badger growled. "I haven't been coercing this pretty thing in anything. I told you, she wanted to come. I ain't tried to get her to do anything unwilling."

"Runt's speakin' truth, Mal" Jayne muttered. "You think I'd stand by watching, otherwise?"

"...See? Even your ape agrees with me."

"It isn't that simple, Badger." Zoe didn't retreat the hand. "She can be..." She hesitated, seeing fury in River's eyes. "It's not safe for her to be outside the ship. And she gets confused, sometimes."

"Girl's stark starin' nuts on a good day," Jayne saw fit to translate. "You don't want her. Got me a fine few scars from her more ornery-crazy days."

"Mind that turning a blade on Jayne might be generally thought of as an indication of perfect sanity in some circles," Mal said, "But one thing he's got straight - she's not going with you. Need to get the girl back to the boat. Now. Way before now. Zoe - "

River sombrely let Zoe take her by the hand and wrapped her fingers around the older woman's smooth brown arm as she drew her in. Her body language completed its transition back to what passed for her sort of normal. Her eyes crept back to the startled and mayhap somewhat stricken Badger, and she told him seriously, "It was only a game. You really should go now... But it's all right, I already know you won't." Her eyes lifted and her head rolled back, body arching, nose pointing up to the darkened sky. "They're coming."

"Oh, crap," said Wash, starting to look around intently.

"Who's coming?" Mal demanded. "Alliance? River, are the feds coming?" He scowled at the shadows, drawing his gun.

"Doesn't matter," she said. "Too late."

"What?" asked Badger, thoroughly lost.

"Jayne," Zoe barked. He had the gun drawn from his boot in one hand, and... Mal didn't even know where he'd had hidden the smaller pistol he tossed into her waiting hands. She caught it easily as the shadows surged and sprouted men.

"Zoe... Wash!" Mal started to swear and realised there was no time; dragged Kaylee from Wash's arm instead. "You both go! Take her - " He pointed them at River. Kaylee couldn't stay upright, let alone run. He tried to angle his own body to protect her. Zoe, Wash and River were already in flight down the street.

"Captain - " Jayne was reaching with his empty arm, and Mal handed Kaylee over to his care.

Badger's men had drawn their weapons, but it seemed they weren't so sure whether they'd be firing them. The sight of Alliance uniforms maybe fazed them a mite. "What's going on?" Badger yelped. He recoiled, doused with blood as the first shots cut down an undecided henchman. That at least seemed to decide the other fairly firmly. Badger raised a red-spattered hand and stared at it, then furiously across at Mal. Swearing, he ducked to retrieve the dead man's gun and danced back to join them in the negligible cover of a nearby wall. "You brought Alliance trouble down on us?"

"No." The proximity of a shot passing close by his ear made his own decision to shoot to kill. Lawmen and the middle of a street on gorram Persephone be damned. "You did that yourself when you took that girl off my ship."

"Tol' you," Jayne grumbled from further down the wall. A shot sent chips of brick flying and drew a frightened noise from Kaylee.

"They're after the girl?" Badger swore at length.

"Never goes smooth," Mal murmured to himself, and snatched a glance across to the alley where Zoe and Wash had taken River. Needed to keep the feds from following after them, he figured. At the same time, he couldn't afford to go after them back to Serenity until he could be sure they'd lost all pursuit. There was still a chance she'd only been spotted out in the town and nobody could trace her back to the ship. And if that was true, they might make it out of this intact. Long as they didn't shed no blood to leave their DNA behind, it was too dark for the rest of them to have been readily identified. Though he might have to add Jayne to the list of crew confined to ship on planets with a big Alliance contingent. Badger... well, Badger was his own lookout.

He fired at a grey uniform across the street and then jerked his head up as a scream rent the air. It was a sound not quite sane - not the sharp, scared note of someone caught by horror or surprise, but a song that lifted and fell, faltered and broke.

"River - "

He came up shooting; tried to get out of cover and across the unprotected, too-wide street to follow Wash and Zoe. A hail of fire sent him crouching back down again. The guns the Alliance boys carried were hell of a lost faster and sharper than his own battered pistol. He was aware of Jayne similarly pinned down, Kaylee tucked behind him and trying to make herself real small.

Was too busy ducking to see all of what happened then. Was only aware of a sharp motion from Badger - another signal, directed to his remaining man - and then the henchman was laying down covering fire with a fancy powered rifle, and Badger was across the street, snatching the chance to direct a few ill-aimed shots back at the feds before he disappeared. Mal stood up and tried once more to follow, but there was a choked sound as the henchman took a laser shot through the throat, which left him three feet out of cover and scrambling back for his own safety in another hail of fire.

***

River's scream started the moment before a half-dozen feds sprouted from the shadows in front of them, and kept on going after. She wasn't looking at the feds - her gaze crawled around like it was the air itself telling her what was worth screaming about.

"This way!" Wash grabbed her shoulders and tugged her back the way they'd come, where another narrow street branched off. It floated banners and illuminated signs in Chinese down its length; voices and music spilled out to it from a pool hall and bar. Zoe followed, incongruous in her green dress as she laid down covering fire with the borrowed gun.

A couple of vagrants were staring. Wash finally stopped River's screams by planting his sweating palm over her mouth. Behind them, his wife cast her eye over the bar and the stores that were open, and shook her head very slightly. "We stand out too well right now to blend into the crowd, and this town, they'd as likely side with the Alliance. Just keep running."

"Nobody wants any trouble..." Wash murmured, and swore as he tried to guide the struggling girl down a quieter street and almost sent them down a dead end. "Why don't you lead?" he suggested, frustrated, pushing River ahead.

She faltered. "Can't see. Can't see - " Her hands raised, spread fingers webbing to veil her eyes.

"Ai ya!" He grabbed her hand again and tugged her onward, but the girl moved like her limbs were weighted with lead. They were headed into one of those parts of the town that only really came alive at night, and it was just starting to do just that. A shot skimmed past as they rounded a corner, turning a bystander's face into a mass of red. "Jesus - !" Wash craned his head wildly back over his shoulder to Zoe. "No!"

She lay on her back not six feet behind, the green dress draped 'round her fallen form like she'd been artfully arranged there.

River, under his arm, said, "She's not dead. That one took the death for her." Gazing forward toward the man with no face left.

Unheeding of the sounds of gunfire still going on, somewhere, Wash was by his wife's side and couldn't remember the steps in between. She had a bullet graze on the side of her head, but he couldn't find anything else, and she was alive - thank God, she was alive... How long she'd stay that way was looking the more troublesome part. He felt panic threatening to sweep him up, but River was behind him and Zoe's gun was lying by her outstretched hand. He picked it up.

Raising his head, still crouched down, he realised all the shooting wasn't just the feds in pursuit. They were nearer now, but they weren't even faced his way. Instead they were returning fire at someone behind them. Relief overtook him, and he aimed and pulled the trigger and watched the nearest figure fall with a certain detachment. He'd killed men before, on Niska's skyplex, armed with as much anger as he had now. The rest of the Alliance men took cover, under attack from two directions.

Wash glanced to the side distractedly as he saw River move. She had crawled to the corpse of the man he'd shot, and she traced her fingers over the dead face. The sight prompted a sickness in his stomach he really wasn't needing, on top of everything else. She didn't close the dead man's eyes. Wash fired again and the gun clicked hollowly. "River," he hissed, keeping hold of the weapon as if it wasn't empty, though he crouched down further. "River... his gun..." He reached an empty hand toward her, nodding encouragingly. The dead man's weapon lay inches from her fingers.

She blinked back at him. "No touching."

He could have strangled Mal. "That's not... captain wouldn't... Throw me the damn gun!"

She tipped her head and arched it slowly on her neck. "Cavalry's here," she said, with an odd smile.

He followed her gaze. Expecting to see Mal or Jayne or both, he was astounded by the sight of Badger toting his henchman's laser rifle with a certain enthusiastic ineptness.

"Trying to impress a girl," River explained seriously.

Wash gaped at her, and didn't realise he'd lowered his gun hand 'til a fed rifle clicked its threatening song a few feet away. He let the weapon fall from his fingers and raised both hands, standing carefully. "I'm unarmed!" He tried to avoid looking down at Zoe, hoping they'd figure her for dead. She'd have a better chance that way, from what they'd seen of the people who were hunting River.

A pair of handcuffs was snapped around his wrists, but their concentration focused mostly on River. She wasn't currently doing anything much, but there was a firearm inches from her fingers and maybe they had an inkling what she was supposed to be capable of doing with it. She stared around at them with her mouth hanging open until they'd crept close enough to haul her up and away from the gun. She started struggling as soon as they touched her. They weren't gentle trying to restraining her.

"Hey, you don't - " Wash began.

"Get off her," a voice snarled. One of the men holding the girl fell as a shot sounded. The other dragged her body out in front of his own.

Wash winced. Badger had emerged from cover and was levelling his gun at the remaining feds, but even Wash could see there were too many. Even if Badger's chief asset was always bluster, it wasn't going to work here.

"Shoot him - " began the one with lieutenant's markings, impatiently.

Almost the same instant, River cried out, in that bubbling voice and her odd facsimile of Badger's accent, "Simon! I knew you'd come for me!"

"Eh?" said Badger, which expressed Wash's thoughts fairly adequately, too.

The Alliance men exchanged glances. "The brother," the lieutenant said, nodding. "We take him alive if we can."

"What?" Badger gave a nervous laugh, and his eyes shifted 'round as if registering the specifics of his situation for the first time. He visibly counted the number of fed rifles pointed his way, gauging his very small chances. The gun fell from his own hands as he raised them. "I give up." He grimaced. "I... ah, I reckon what we have here might be a bit of a misunderstanding, people," he tried. "See, I really don't know these-"

"Simon," River chided with a smile.

His head jerked around frantically as a fed handcuffed him, coming finally back around to the girl. "This is a joke, right? Tell them-"

"I'd shut up now, Simon, if I were you," Wash said, nodding seriously and trying to catch the man's eye. Badger wasn't completely stupid. He gaped a moment, then subsided.

The sound of more shots being fired echoed from the direction they'd come. Mal and Jayne, Wash thought - hoped. But the Alliance lieutenant frowned nervously back that way, and made a quick survey of his depleted men before giving the order to pull out. "Bring them. It's important we secure the prisoners. If the clean-up team don't pull the rest in... well, they'll tell us who helped them sooner or later."

Wash carefully didn't look back toward Zoe, lying with the dead in the emptied street, as they were hustled away.

***

By the neon glow of Persephone's night, they could still see the feds making themselves scarce in the distance as they broke through into the street where all the shooting had been. Mal gunned down the last man of their own pursuit with his last bullet. He swore as he clicked open his gun to glare at its empty chambers, then stared grimly after the retreating feds and the familiar figures they were manhandling away.

"I'm all out," he said.

Jayne was low himself. He took in the mess of the street around them, three Alliance corpses and one dead bystander, and... "Oh, hey, Mal - Zoe." He scrambled over to her, not so quick as the captain, who it happened didn't have a Kaylee hanging around his waist.

"She's alive," Mal said, even as he took his hand from her neck and moved to the side of an Alliance man who assuredly wasn't. He ignored a discarded laser rifle in favour of a pistol still holstered at the fed's belt. Mal's eyes fixed again the distant figures almost out of view, drifted to Kaylee and Zoe, and then Jayne. "Jayne - you follow them. Don't be seen. I want to know where they're taken. Soon as you know, you come back to Serenity - but take care, seeing as we don't know for sure if they know about her. And don't you get followed back either, case they don't." He jammed the Alliance man's gun through his belt.

"Right." Jayne nodded, taking note which way the feds turned even while he unfurled Kaylee, depositing her on the ground by Zoe's still form. Girl was looking green, as much from all the drink as from all the death. No sooner she'd touched down then she emptied her stomach on the pavement. He nodded approval same time as wrinkling his nose - least she might be able to walk a bit better, now she'd rid herself of some of it. Though Inara wasn't going to be too happy 'bout the dress. "You'll be all right with these two? Feds'll be back, and likely more of 'em."

"I'll manage." Mal had already gathered Zoe into his arms, no small feat given Zoe was damn near as tall as he was and not exactly a lightweight. He strained visibly, straightening, and distractedly said to Kaylee, staggering two steps to butt her shoulder with his knee, "C'mon, girl. You gotta walk: can't pick you up as well. But hang onto me and we'll get there." The words stirred her to sluggish action, her fingers clawing handfuls of his pants as she practically climbed his body to get herself upright.

Mal looked back to Jayne, and past him to where the feds and their prisoners could no longer be seen. "Go."

***

Chapter 3

"With respect, sir - to hell with the head wound. We need to be looking at how we're going to get my husband back."

"Zoe, stay down, gorramit! Doc needs to check you out first. And doctor - I understand you're feeling a mite restless as well, but at the moment what we need to know is if Zoe's gonna be all right." Mal's hand pressed her back into the infirmary chair. He caught Simon's shoulders, firmly guiding him around and setting him in front of the chair. "Right now, might as well relax and get doctored. Can't do anything 'til Jayne gets back... assuming he hasn't gone and gotten himself caught, too."

Zoe had woken up as they approached Eavesdown Docks to find Mal hauling her and Kaylee back to Serenity like so much baggage and her husband nowhere in sight. They'd come back into the ship, Mal waving some Alliance toy pistol around, to find Simon in a flat panic and fixing to do Jayne some serious harm. Mostly, though, Zoe's concerns were for her man who'd not so long since been tortured by Niska and now was in Alliance hands. Potentially the hands of those folks who'd tortured and cut into River, who'd also demonstrated no compunction about leaving a trail of corpses behind them of people who knew too much.

"How do we even know it wasn't Jayne who betrayed us - again - in the first place?" Simon raised, although at Mal's pointed glare he at least took to making his protests in between doing his job. His hands felt cool and steady at her temple, despite the anger and the shake in his voice. "He took her out of the ship! What the hell was he thinking?"

"I'd guess in this situation he was thinking of Badger's people having a bunch of guns on the both of them." Mal had that stillness he got in place of anger which meant, usually, he hadn't any patience for having his orders questioned, though the doctor had showed a persistent slowness of uptake on that matter many a time before. "Jayne didn't do this, on account of earlier he was shooting feds by my side and they ain't that forgiving, ruse or no. 'Sides, that last betrayal near got him killed twice over, by them and by me, so if his lesson ain't learned by now he's even dumber'n I ever thought."

"How about your Sir Warwick?" Book asked, watching grimly in near-military stance, arms folded. "In fact, how can we be sure they won't descend on us here, that they aren't just waiting for the right moment?"

Mal fixed him a glare, too, over the top of Simon's bowed head. "We can't be sure - but I'm not about to cut and run. If we lose Serenity, we lose it all. If they have our names, it's over, sooner or later. No way can we hide the whole crew. But we have to work on the assumption they don't know those things and we can still haul ourselves clear of all this mess. Only assumption right now that's worth working on."

"Something of an act of faith, captain," the Shepherd pointed out gently.

"Nothing but simple common sense," Mal retaliated. "I'll worry about those things I can do something to change." He grimaced. "It wasn't Sir Warwick. That wasn't an ambush set up from someone knew we'd be coming out of his place. Plenty better places for them to jump us if they knew we were coming." His eyes strayed over to where Kaylee lay on the bed in the corner, as an unidentifiable mumble emerged from that direction.

Zoe shifted slightly in the chair, easing aches, as Simon finished cleaning the gash on her head and started to unroll a wad of dressing. He still looked angry. Boy had done well to stay on the ship, though Book had also had something to do with that, and might've struggled if the waiting had stretched any longer.

Mal jerked his head toward Kaylee, distracting Simon from dressing the wound a moment. "There something you can give her? I could use my engineer operational."

"There is," the doctor said reluctantly, "But she'd feel it later, and would be unlikely to thank you."

"Then she and I will have to deal with that later. Reckon she's got some misery headed her way if we do nothing anyhow." The edge of his mouth quirked up in a fragment of a smile, dragged down too soon by their weight of problems. "Get her up and about once you're finished with Zoe."

There was a crash of a door that reverberated from somewhere inside the ship, and Mal was out of the infirmary, the Alliance issue gun drawn, in an instant. Simon's fingers stilled on her head as the two of them waited, not breathing, and Zoe wished she could be confident of staying on her feet unaided if it happened they had to fight. After a moment, voices sounded from somewhere down the passageway, and slowly worked their way closer.

Book relaxed the position he'd taken by the door as Mal walked back in with Jayne at his side, even though they'd been able to discern who was approaching by their voices some seconds earlier. He relaxed too soon anyhow, as it turned out.

Simon was a blur as he flung himself forward. "You!" the doctor snarled, teeth bared, backing Jayne over a work-surface with the force of his tackle, the mercenary too astonished to have even struck back. "How much did they promise to pay you this time? How can you even - knowing what they'll do to her - !"

"I didn't, gorramit - " Jayne protested, voice descending to a growl as Simon managed to land a respectable punch to his jaw; caught both the doctor's hands roughly and it looked for a moment like they were going to have a surgeon with a full matching set of broken fingers.

"That's enough!" Mal shouted, dragging them apart. He ignored Jayne - the fact he turned his back on him enough an indication of trust for Zoe, watching. He tossed Simon against the wall and pinned him there by leaning weight on the hands he clenched in the doctor's collar. "I don't care what choices he did and didn't make this evening. That's past now. Jayne may just have made it possible to rescue your sister tonight, so I'd quiet down and listen polite to what he has to say." His fingers flexed, tightening their grasp, and Simon flinched. "Now, are we gonna have a problem again if I let you go?"

Simon shook his head, still looking rebellious.

"Good." Mal released him, shoved him back toward the chair, and placed himself between the doctor and Jayne anyway. "Finish doctorin' Zoe," he ordered.

***

"Here's the situation as it stands." Mal paced in front of the crew where they'd arranged themselves around the dining table; Kaylee huddled in her seat back in grease-stained overalls and trying to keep her head up, Zoe with a red-blotted dressing on her head wound standing leaned over her chair with her arms set to the table like a challenge, Jayne outwardly relaxed but his eyes continuing to slide over to where Simon stood with an unusual troubled cast to them, Simon too agitated for sitting. Shepherd Book stood quiet over at the back - man always had had an aversion to sitting in with the rest of them, these meetings where they were about to do something not-entirely-legal. "It's looking like River was spotted in the street by someone with brains enough to report it back in and keep her tagged 'til the cavalry arrived. These weren't regular Alliance troops; they had too much idea what they were chasing for that. And they were playing for keeps - least one bystander got killed by their guns in that exchange. Didn't see anyone caring too much, neither."

He paused, watching their faces. "Point being, firstly - they don't know about Serenity. They don't know who we are. If they had, they'd have come for us by now. So they got no more'n what they had before, leastways for the moment. Now, the way things stand, I don't see that we have many choices. Jayne - " He crossed his arms and stood still, leaning back against the wall, handing over the floor to the merc.

"Place I trailed 'em to - " Jayne jabbed a finger down on a battered electronic map, making the image dissolve a moment with the pressure. "There's an Alliance installation right here. Don't look like much from outside. Small. On the face of it, seems like one of those bureaucratic bits they set up on worlds like this to shift paperwork. But I did some sniffing around and, you ask me, the security don't add up. They got themselves a lot of fancy devices and a whole hell of a lot of armed personnel."

Book put in thoughtfully, "Don't forget, last time, Persephone was where we picked up our mole."

Mal nodded. "So what we have," he said, "Is a secure Alliance installation. Now, we don't know for sure the extent of what's in there, but I imagine we can all grasp pretty well we're not talking a walk in the park." A small cough of nervous laughter escaped him. "We need to think about this carefully."

"Sir," Zoe began, and Simon angrily said, "We are going to get them back, captain? If you think I'm just leaving my sister in their hands, after everything - "

"Didn't say we weren't." Mal cut him off. "See, they don't know about Serenity... yet. But soon as they get Wash or River or - hell - Badger talking, they will. And then, there won't be nowhere the rest of us can hide. Speed is what matters here. If we can get in fast, we can get them out 'fore that information gets logged and makes it onto any permanent records... or the cortex... then there's a chance we can still get out of this free and flying. We rescue them, we rescue ourselves - because if they stay in Alliance custody every one of us is gonna end up a tagged fugitive. And need I remind you all that on top of everything else, Serenity is going precisely nowhere without Wash. Ain't none of the rest of us know enough about flying to break atmo in this boat."

Simon had listened to all of that with his lips pressing harder together in anger, until they were white by the time he said, "That's very selfless of you, captain."

Mal shot him a look. "I'm just outlining the facts as they stand. And I'm not finished yet." He dragged his gaze over the rest. "This time-scale doesn't give us long to come up with a plan. Kaylee, we need to know if there's any way we can break their security, or at least make some kind of distraction to get the edge on them. You and Jayne and - " He gave the preacher a quelling glance " - Shepherd Book can get to working on that, seeing how Jayne's the one has seen what they've got and has the best idea of the ground." Mal gauged their understanding from their faces. They were all of them in; even Jayne. This wasn't a rescue mission, it was basic survival.

"There's more," he added carefully. "We need a workable plan and we need it quick... but I want to make one thing clear: it has to stand a chance. We don't have a lot of hope if we can't do this, but I'm not leading us all into suicide, either. We can't do this... then we scatter, make our way separate. That's the only chance any of us will have."

He saw the announcement hit them all. Jayne gave a faintly sour nod of agreement, but otherwise even Kaylee opened her mouth in protest.

"No," Simon said. "I'm not leaving River. We have to try - "

"We will." Zoe's voice had a dangerous edge. She faced Mal across the table. "Something on your mind, sir? You know we don't have anywhere near enough fighters or firepower among us to pull off this kind of operation. Not against the Alliance, even if Kaylee works miracles tying their security in knots."

"Well, now," Mal said, resting his own hands to the table top to mirror her. "I do have an idea might garner us some extra resources in that area."

***

Badger wasn't a man made a habit of courting trouble with the Alliance. No, sir. He had his business, and they had theirs, and happened that the two didn't agree with each other so well, but that was just fine so long as he made good and sure their paths didn't intersect. He'd done a stretch in an Alliance jail a time or two, but he'd no truck with the kind of sentences handed out for aiding fugies. To be harbouring a fugitive from federal justice on his ragged little crew - well, seemed Captain Reynolds had more balls and less brains than Badger'd ever credited him with, for a one-time rebel soldier scraping by in the world that kicked his pigu.

Still, that wasn't to say he couldn't understand the notion. Was a pretty little thing, after all, though apparently more'n a little fickle. Gave a man pause wondering just what it was she might've done, but then who wasn't a bit tarnished in the eyes of the law, these days? Wouldn't be murder, or nothing too bad, if Reynolds chose to take her in - man seemed to reckon he could afford to cling to principles, in these times where all the rest of them were forced to trade theirs off. No, more likely something political that would appeal to that subversive Browncoat mindset.

Sitting on a bench with the lady herself and Reynolds' pilot, in a near-empty room all white reflective tiles and harsh lighting, his hands cuffed behind him and a guard watching them on either side, Badger wished he'd let Captain Reynolds try and play the gorram hero.

They'd been walked into some pokey Alliance building looked more like a storefront than any military set-up. 'Cept this one had a lift at the back that went down a way, and the stretch of sterile corridors and doors and more corridors leading off where they emerged was anything but pokey, and Badger was beginning to get even worse a case of bad feeling about this than he'd had from the moment the cuffs snapped in place around his wrists with that odd kind of familiarity like they'd missed him and was welcoming him back. ("Don't you worry, love," he'd said to the girl - River - as they'd been hustled away 'fore Captain Reynolds could mount that daring rescue. "Prison's not so bad. Play your cards right, even learn yourself a skill or a few while you're there." And she'd looked at him seriously, something in her gaze that bordered on terrifying, and said, "We're not going to prison, Simon." He somehow just knew she didn't mean that in a good way.)

Had been about halfway into the journey through the streets to their current stark cell before he'd remembered 'Simon' was the name of that pampered young doctor Reynolds employed on his crew - and that was a joke, a ship that size keeping a qualified doctor on permanent retainer. Given Reynolds' habit of getting himself sliced and diced, maybe he hadn't given so much thought to it before as it warranted... But the fact was, no doctor without some major circumstances at work would be staying on some gorram junkheap firefly that barely scraped enough living to keep itself in the air.

Now Badger was sitting in handcuffs and not speaking because he couldn't think of anything to say wouldn't reveal to all and sundry he wasn't River's gorram brother. He'd gotten the distinct idea he might be speedily cast off the mortal coil if these people should learn he wasn't part of this business - which didn't exactly make him much in the way of hopeful for the future, given he didn't look a bit like the fellow. Also not speaking because, well, outside you might be able to spin the world on sharp talk, but in the hands of the Establishment you got by on shutting up and keeping your head down. 'Cause sharp talk wasn't about to buy anything more'n a beating in that man's world.

The girl was staring at him. Her feet kicked against the bench that the three of them were arrayed along and he realised for the first time she was wearing too-big black combat boots with that sad cast-off of a dress. "You're much louder now you've gone all quiet," she observed, in near a whisper, still talking for all the world like someone from the Colony, with a tiny smile didn't fit the situation nor all her earlier screaming at all. He grimaced back, trying to think up a retort and decide whether he'd just been insulted. If he could string what she'd just said into any gorram semblance of sense. Her head rotated up and to the side and her smile widened. "Your hat's all crooked."

"I know." It had tipped forward half over his left eye when one of their Alliance escort had gotten friendly with his fists, and it'd been annoying the crap out of him the last half hour while there was precisely nothing he could do about it for the handcuffs.

Reynolds' pilot was giving him an odd look, from over the other side of the girl. Badger had been too relieved he'd finally shut up, after running his mouth off so much about nothing on the way in, to want to encourage conversation. The way the guards had paid attention ever so carefully when River spoke didn't make him want much to get chatty, neither, since he could do without that kind of attention from feds. Even so, he couldn't resist a barked, "What the hell you think you're looking at?"

"Nothing... nothing..." The man looked away innocently, but gave the definite impression of being somehow amused.

River turned her head 'round to the pilot. She said, "You don't tell them nothing if you want that pretty lady o' yours to get away clean." Dyton Colony was thick in her earnest voice, and the guards listened then exchanged their noncommittal glances. Moment after, the door slid open and that bastard lieutenant and two more regular soldiers trailing behind him stepped through.

"You," the lieutenant said, pointing to the pilot. "Get up."

The man looked like he was considering it, but didn't move fast enough for the feds. At a motion from the lieutenant, the two regulars manhandled him to his feet, not being over-gentle about it. "We're going somewhere?" the pilot asked, voice wavering in almost a high giggle. "Where are we going?"

"Processing. These two, we might not be able to touch, but you... you'll tell us where to find the others who've been helping them. Might even buy you enough goodwill to be released from the penal moon a few years before you leave in a coffin."

"That sounds... very... goodwill..."

"Remember," River said, as the poor unfortunate bastard was led away, and the door closed. Then it was just the two of them on a bench in a stark-lit room, and the guards fidgeting with the renewal of boredom.

The girl's eyes slowly went distant as the minutes passed. After a while, her body jerked in her seat - once, and then again only a second after; her eyes wide and shocky as though with pain.

"Something wrong, love?" Badger asked.

She looked at him, and it seemed more like she was looking through him. Spoke in a voice wasn't anything like his or her own, but maybe a little like Reynolds' pilot... at least in the way it was instilled with no small quantity of high panic that wasn't matched in her now-blank gaze.

"You don't scare me. I've been tortured by experts," she said, as her body jerked again.

***

"I'm still not sure I understand why I'm even here," Simon murmured as they headed towards the set-up where Badger made his den. Garbage with pretensions, he thought. Crates, parts and make-do fashioned in a junkyard palace on the edge of the docks.

"Simple," Mal said, clapping a hand on his shoulder as they walked. "Wanted a criminal mastermind on hand in this job. You just think evil thoughts and twirl that imaginary black moustache of yours, doctor, and pretend you're our good luck charm."

"Ariel only worked because I knew the ground," he said, rather suspecting Mal wanted his 'criminal mastermind' out of the way of Jayne. "Are you people never going to let go of that one?"

"About as soon as they all let go of fancy shindigs and sword fights."

The gun at Simon's hip felt unfamiliar, himself too aware of its weight and the way it poked his thigh when he moved. When he'd strapped it on, he'd been thinking of wearing it to storm the Alliance installation where River was held, to get his sister back no matter what. It was something of a comedown to be taking it instead into a den of thieves and scoundrels who reportedly tended to consider Captain Reynolds quaint and honourable in the business... His mind had a great deal of trouble processing that one.

They were very near the construction now. Simon took a deliberate breath and tried to fall into step with Zoe and Mal the way they were in step with each other, and he didn't quite manage it, but he told himself this was as much of import to rescuing River as a full-out attack on the Alliance itself, and kept trying.

A hand fell on his arm and half a dozen guns levelled as they brushed through a curtain into a main chamber that overall looked decidedly shabby, though there was a desk and the odd individual item that must have been expensive. The hand on his arm belonged to a guard who'd been standing out of sight at the edge of the curtain. His grip was bruising.

Simon's hand wanted to drift to his own gun, as though just wearing it created that very reflex, but neither Mal nor Zoe had made any move to draw theirs. They just stood projecting an aura of unimpressed calm Simon was certain he didn't have himself.

"Some bad news about your boss," Mal said casually. "Alliance bagged him. I'm thinking that's an awful shame, with him being such an upstanding citizen in these parts. Pillar of the community..."

The several dangerous and armed men didn't move. Mal surveyed them carefully, then stepped further inside the chamber, his hands keeping well clear of his pistol. They swung wide as he walked, in a half-hearted parody of being raised. He came to a halt at Badger's empty desk and hitched his hip over the side, leaning there with an air of command. Badger's men looked restless.

Zoe shot Simon a look that he interpreted to mean 'be ready'. Because he really needed to be told that, he thought irritably, the way his nerves were already on edge.

"I figure you already got this information," Mal said, toying with a few harmless objects on the desk, "Badger's information network being so good and all. Maybe you've even already engaged in a discussion or two 'bout how you might fill that power vacuum."

Some of the men looked more agitated than others. Simon noticed more had crept out of the woodwork, another half-dozen pairs of eyes watching on the sidelines. To say he had a 'bad feeling' about this plan didn't even begin to cover his apprehension.

"Way I figure it, though - " Mal's voice had taken on a friendly, near-amused tone, and he waggled an open hand at the men in a placating gesture while his left hand, exploring, found an apple on the desk and plucked it up. He regarded it, eyes flicking down for what felt like way too long, and then back up. Next to Simon, Zoe stood like she was cut out of rock " - Better the devil you know." The captain waved the apple. "Transition is always painful, and in this line, as I'm sure you're aware, usually results in more'n a few corpses alongside the general upheaval. From what I hear, Badger was a fairly reasonable animal, all things considered, not too bad to work for. Kept you in pay, stayed clear of trouble... cagey with his contacts, mind. I guess that last part might make life a fraction hard-going a while without him, 'til things settle in. Maybe you boys are even thinking you might be in for some trouble."

Simon looked to Zoe. The thought running through his head was, inescapably, 'We're going to die', but her expression hadn't changed.

"Could be there's another choice," Mal added, almost an afterthought.

Finally, one of the henchmen stepped forward of the others. A scrawny, stretched-out fellow with long, lank hair and an array of knives hung about his person. The glances the other men sent his way spanned a range from resentful to uncertain. "Get off my gorram desk," he said.

As he started speaking, Zoe kicked Simon's foot surreptitiously: an unmistakeable now.

Before he'd finished speaking, a shot sounded, and Simon scrabbled to draw his own weapon as Zoe was doing - had already done - without taking his eyes off the scene. Even so, he'd already missed entirely the moment the captain drew, and only saw him now with his pistol raised, but not aimed at anyone, merely resting parallel to his shoulder, pointed up to the air. With a brief grimace at the defiance of long habit, he took a bite out of the apple in his other hand and waited, letting the new landscape of the situation sink in to all present. Simon stood with Zoe and tried to look threatening, levelling the unfamiliar gun at... the world in general.

By the time Mal finished chewing, the air in the chamber actually felt, if anything, a little more relaxed. He rested the hand still holding the apple against the edge of the desk and nodded at the corpse on the floor. Nobody had made any particular move toward it.

He said, "How about we say I'm your new boss and I'm saying we're going to get your old boss back?"

***

"Sit down!" Fury in the voice and the shove that took the last of his balance from him. He almost landed on Badger, but the smaller man managed to scoot to the side at the last moment so that Wash ended up this time seated between his fellow captives. River looked pale and serious. Paying attention to that at least pried some pieces of his concentration from the lingering pain of his questioners' fists. His nose felt squashed, and there was a trickle over his top lip that he left to ooze.

"Torture a part of the arrest process now in a civilised society?" River said sweetly, though there was enough mockery in there that Lieutenant Armin raised an angry, open palm, only stalling it as he'd begun to bring it down. River hadn't flinched, like she'd known the blow would never land. Nice for her.

"Your ally refuses to identify himself, little girl. As such, he's waived any rights the due process gives him, including legal representation, might I add - " the lieutenant looked pointedly at Wash " - according to Alliance law."

"Like it'd matter anyhow." Wash raised his head, defiantly trying to focus his blurring vision. "You people have no intention of following due process." That time, Armin didn't curtail his blow, nor deliver it open-palmed. Wash fell back against Badger again, who bolstered him up with a shoulder and an edgy, "steady."

The lieutenant smiled. He had two subordinates behind him who looked like they wouldn't mind at all if he didn't want to get his own hands dirty, but Wash figured he was a hands-on kinda guy. He proved it again by placing those hands on the wall either side of Wash's head as he leaned in close. "It won't matter, you know. It will take less than twenty-four hours to isolate your DNA scan and find out just who you are. Soon after that we'll have a trace on who you're working for or with. And whoever else was shooting at my men out there in the street that you're trying to give a head start? They can't run fast enough or long enough to escape the Alliance. There aren't many people out there foolish enough to harbour a tagged fugitive. There'll be nowhere they can hide."

Wash looked away, telling himself it didn't matter, a head start was better than nothing. It was a chance... Simon and River had found Mal, and Serenity, after all.

"I don't know," Badger said, eyes darting to River, then back to the lieutenant, with a spark in them that had been notably absent earlier. "It's a big universe. No shortage of places to hide. Took you people long enough to find us, didn't it?"

"He speaks," Wash murmured, with mock surprise, as Armin backed off to pay attention to Badger instead.

"How long's it been, now? A year? And you only found us this time 'cause you got lucky. Who was it sold us out, if you don't mind my asking? After all, not like we'll get opportunity to do anything with the information."

"Nobody 'sold you out'." The lieutenant's fingers twitched at his sides. "You were spotted on the docks. Her face is well known."

"But not so much mine, eh?"

Wash tried to elbow Badger covertly, while Armin's face twisted in distaste. "I can see that a year living as a renegade hasn't done you any favours, doctor. But she's the one they really want."

"'They'? Comes from high up, doesn't it, I'll bet? So you're just the legwork, then. Not even allowed to lay a hand on little sister here and my own unfavourable self, eh? Nah... not even allowed to process us. I'll bet that must rankle something mean."

"I'd suggest you not test the limits of my patience too hard," Armin said frostily. He half-turned away, appeared to consider a moment, then came around again with another blow that knocked Wash back into the wall, forcing the air from his body in a 'whuff'.

Badger snorted.

"No!" Wash snapped, soon as he'd the breath to, snapping his head 'round between Badger and River. "In case you're thinking this has the potential to be a really fun game, just... don't do anything else, okay? Either of you!" The lieutenant laughed and turned again to go. "And why is it I have to be the one it's okay to hit?"

"The universe decided," River said. "Tossed a coin. The coin would have had a billion different sides, you know, but then what's basic physics to fate anyhow?"

"What indeed." He heard a touch of hysteria in his own voice. River might have the worst of their predicament in the long run, but that didn't mean he wasn't scared to the bone. The Alliance folks involved in this killed those that knew too much. He hoped his wife was still alive, and Mal had gotten her away. Not long since, he'd been resenting that relationship... now it was the best hope he had to count on. Mal and Zoe looked out for each other a long time before Zoe met him. They'd keep on doing so, no matter what happened to him.

Mal had never owned up to his talent for picking enemies when, all those years ago, Wash had agreed to take on this job.

Another Alliance uniform chose that moment to enter the room, halting Armin at the door. The newcomer wore a hassled expression and no insignia on a simplified uniform that suggested an admin or intelligence role. From the glimpse he caught through the door, it seemed there was something going on in the corridors outside. Wash would've liked to call it a disturbance and imagine it was his own gorgeous warrior wife leading the rescue operation, but it seemed strictly more of a 'bustle' than a disturbance.

"What's going on?" Armin demanded.

"Problem with waste disposal, lieutenant..." The man took in Badger, Wash and River disinterestedly, then his attention caught, and stayed, on Badger.

"Problem?" Armin prompted impatiently.

"Sewers, sir. Seem to have backed up. With, er, gusto. Bit of a mess."

"For God's sake, get it cleared by the time they get here." Armin looked a mite on the hassled side, now, too.

"Yes, sir, that was... They've signalled their expected arrival in ten minutes." The officer's eyes had returned to Badger, who slunk down further into the bench, and his forehead furrowed. "These are the three prisoners, sir? The fugitives? The brother and sister? Simon and River Tam? These?"

"Yes," Armin said. "What's - ?"

"That - " he pointed " - isn't Simon Tam. His name's Badger - I processed him a couple of years back on smuggling charges. He's one of the more colourful pieces of the local lowlife."

***

His back slammed against the wall of the interrogation room, and he heard a pistol drawn - a moment later, smooth metal pressed to the side of his head. "I won't ask you again," the lieutenant said. "Your little stunt may just have killed every man on this base, so don't think I'll hold back from pulling this trigger. Now, where... is Simon Tam?"

The girl's dark eyes rose up in his mind, looking through him. The pilot's desperate, cracked voice replayed: "Don't tell them anything! They'll kill you anyway."

"Don't!" Badger gasped around the grip constricting his throat. "It's Malcolm Reynolds you want - captains this pile of go se firefly... Serenity! Serenity, he calls it; laid up in docks right now, seeing as that's his rutting pilot you got in there. Your fugie kids... they're on his gorram crew."

***

Chapter 4

"I reckon we're breaking, oh, about a hundred traffic laws here," Kaylee said cheerfully, from where she was hunched over all kinds of mechanical and chemical components, some of which Book recognised and some he didn't, "But not to worry. Persephone's Alliance air police force catch on, we can always ditch the junk and say I was drivin', then that's just drunk in charge." She cautiously placed a tray with a tiny pile of powder on it at arm's length, and used a spoon to scatter an even smaller fraction of another powder over it. The resulting conflagration, though he'd been expecting it, still made him jump.

"Whoo! That one near took my eyebrows off. Yup, the stuff's still good." She grinned up at him. "Y' reckon Simon'll still think I'm pretty with no eyebrows? There's a fair bit more going into the main feature than this little explosion."

"I'm sure he would," Book said. "But right now, eyebrows are hardly the most pressing matter." Whatever Simon had given Kaylee to wake her up, it had kicked in with a vengeance. Trying to keep a girl who was high as a kite fixed to the ground long enough to safely handle quantities of highly combustible materials... well, it wasn't the best distraction for a man who hadn't flown much of anything in years trying to guide an unfamiliar shuttle through a tricky manoeuvre.

"Yes." Kaylee swallowed, nodded with purpose and made an effort to at least ape his gravity. "Got to get River and Wash back. I know that. You - " She waved a pointing finger vaguely his way. "You just keep hovering right where y' are." She finished scraping together the components and stood up, wavering slightly more than the shuttle was doing. She crossed to the hatch and flung it wide, shouting something back that was lost into the night air and the suddenly much louder engine roar. She pulled her head back inside to repeat it: "Need to lose just a little altitude - not too much, mind, 'less we want to be wedged in to the wall of that 'scraper as a permanent feature. Fun for the tourists."

Book eased the little ship very gently down. "Left a bit," Kaylee supplied. "No - no - whoo! Almost had us fried, there. That's good. Keep her... just... like... that..." She checked the silent comm clipped to her belt with a pout. "Sure hope the cap'n and the others are on schedule. I figure we got about fifteen minutes tops hovering up here 'fore someone reports us."

She dipped her body out of the shuttle, reaching for the unseen jagged silver towers of the power substation mounted atop its sculpted near-mile-high post. Out of view, the structure was a mere scatter of digital information to Book.

They'd had to disable two hovering warning buoys to get this far, and any plan involving Kaylee leaning out quite that far over quite that much nothing in her current state was a plan made Book uneasy. Occupied with the controls as he was, there wasn't anything he'd be able to do if she lost her balance. They'd had to disable half the auto functions just to get up close to the substation.

Kaylee all but disappeared a moment, in which it took all his restraint to keep the ship steady. But she bobbed up again breathing heavy and pulled herself right back inside the shuttle. He was sure he breathed more a sigh of relief than she did. "Some good old-fashioned sabotage," she said, wiping off her hands again. "Can't stray far, I'm afraid. With this much energy around to be causin' interference, we'll have to be all but on top of this little pop-bomb to set it off remotely. Oh, don't worry, though - should have three or four seconds to get clear 'fore it goes, and it ain't that big." She sank down on her haunches next to the shuttle's open hatch. "Now all we need is word from the captain."

"And soon," Book observed, as the shuttle juddered under his hands.

Kaylee agreed. "This goes wrong and all those large, violent types the cap'n brought back won't be thinking too well of me. Mind, considerin' if this goes wrong there ain't none of us gonna see the light of day again long enough to care 'bout things like that, I guess that's one thing at least I can quit worryin' over."

***

"Mr Grey, Mr Halloran," Lieutenant Armin greeted the two men respectfully. He tried to remain unmoved by their flat stares and the distraction of their odd gloves, though they always made his skin feel like it was being crawled over inside by a thousand tiny, unsavoury things. "I hope your journey went well. I didn't expect to see you here so soon - "

"So we gather." The taller man on his left spoke, but their disapproving expressions were the same, and it seemed to him it wouldn't matter which spoke, in either case what emerged would be identical. "Some trouble with the plumbing." On anyone else, it would have been amusement. But it wasn't.

"A programming glitch. The city's systems are automated." Armin made to turn and lead the way. "I'll take you to the prisoners."

A raised blue hand stalled him, made him swing back over-quickly and betray his unease. "Isn't there something else you want to tell us first, Lieutenant Armin?" The man he knew as Mr Grey was toying with something long and thin in his hands.

"We hear that isn't the only trouble you've been having," prompted the man he knew as Mr Halloran.

Just like he'd known would be the case, the voice was slightly different, but the words were exactly the same.

***

"Thunder," River said, into the silence that followed the scream. Her head turned not to the door beyond which it had originated, but raised to the ceiling, as though her stare might penetrate right through it, and through the buildings overhead, up into the empty sky beyond.

***

//"It ain't like with the lassiter, or on Ariel," Kaylee had said, all of them 'round the table 'round her. "We started out on those jobs with all the details. Here what we have's just guesswork, though Shepherd Book helped fill in some blanks."

Jayne snorted at that last, and the preacher avoided meeting anyone's eyes, looking consummately neutral.

Kaylee continued, "Most Alliance offices and installations are built to a standard set of layouts and specifications - only way they could do it, speed they whammed most of the things up during and after the war. Managed to get a sense of the basic plans and layouts from off the cortex, figuring what space and materials they've had to work with here on Persephone, but we can't count on 'em too well..." She lay the plans out anyhow, in front of Mal.

"What about their security?" he asked.

She grimaced, which was answer enough. "Functions - power and water and the like - we had more luck with. Can't get to their auxiliary power or into security direct, but I can take down the power for the block. There should be a few seconds while it makes the transition over to their emergency stores. We figure the main part of the base is underground, beneath that little office space on the surface, so if I hit their power at the right moment, we can use that to get inside the outer security perimeter, at least. Like I say, we're going in blind here. Gonna have to improvise."

"Then we'll improvise," Mal said. "You just get in place, and we'll figure a time frame."

"Oh," Kaylee added with a quick grin. "And I... could also back up their drains, if you like. Real easy, in fact."

"Might distract them more'n a little in itself," Mal agreed neutrally.//

He gunned down the uniform blocking their path and ducked just in time as Zoe threw a grenade on one hell of a short fuse. "Who you tryin' to blow up?" he asked, coming to his feet in a sharp turn to get the man rising from behind a desk.

"Just keeping you on your toes." She smiled, and they made it through the end of a corridor didn't seem to particularly lead anywhere, shooting the guard stationed at the end and entering an oasis of calm as Badger's men put in a good showing for themselves behind them. "This should be it." She reloaded quickly, her eyes staying on the corridor they'd just come down, while Mal examined the door the dead man had been guarding. "It's not like there's anywhere else left to search if it isn't. Not an overly large building, sir."

Mal searched the man's pockets, briefly attempting to decipher the purpose of various keycards, but everything indicated that a more subtle entry would require more figuring than they had time for. Jayne rebounded off the corner, firing behind himself and cursing as a shot singed his T-shirt but left his skin intact. Mal called him over.

"This it?"

"It'll have to be."

"Good doors. Reinforced. All that looks a fancy piece of work, too." He nodded to the control pad at the doors' side.

"All relies on power." Mal flashed him a forced smile. "Guess the Alliance have gotten complacent now the war's over and they ain't expecting any all-out attacks."

"Uh-huh. Easy as pie next to that fancy pad of Niska's. This place sure as hell wasn't made for a war... What's complacent?" Jayne dropped the bag he'd been hauling along extra to the weight of his own portable armoury and Mal joined him sifting through the contents 'til they both held wrenches, while Zoe stepped aside and concentrated the rifle in her hands on the task of guarding their backs.

Mal set the wrench in place, carefully, and lifted the comm to his mouth. "Kaylee? Now."

He heard her chirpy assent, "Yessir!" even as the comm was falling to bounce among the overspilling contents of the bag on the floor.

There was a delay long enough to make them all feel a bit foolish and then to catch them by surprise when the lights flickered and dimmed, and the ambient hum of power from the many machines about the place died, never so noticeable as when they were gone. Mal planted the wrench and hauled the doors wide, matched by Jayne doing the same the other side. As the emergency power was kicking in, Jayne was swapping his wrench for Vera. The mechanisms had been blasted all to hell by the time the lights were back on full, just nasty-smelling smoke in the air. Mal hung onto his side of the door as it continued its attempt to shut automatically and Jayne swore and flung a shoulder against his side. Then, as the connections finished frying and the last of the power drained, the resistance choked up, doors hanging stuck in place.

Zoe had Simon and a half dozen of Badger's people gathered with her. Only one sported any injury of note, one of Badger's men who'd a bloody, charred patch at his shoulder. He saw her ordering two of them in place to guard their exit.

"Jayne," Mal prompted.

The merc held up the grenade, which had been prepared with a little something extra taped around it.

"Heads down," he said, with a broad grin, as he hurled it into the shaft.

***

"You told them, didn't you?" He leaned in closer to Badger to hiss the words while the guards were uneasily paying the larger portion of their attention to the door. They hadn't seemed surprised by the scream, almost like it wasn't anything they hadn't heard before, but it had made them jittery. Taking the opportunity to vent some of his anger at Badger at least distracted his mind from the cold chill that had snaked itself through him at what he'd heard in that scream.

"Of course I told 'em," Badger snapped. "What the hell do you think?"

"Of course he told them," River said, with an odd patience, her voice all her own again now there was no call for subterfuge. "It's what he does. It's the way the 'verse turns."

"In his world, maybe - the world of the snivelling little big-talking lowlife creep - " Somehow, his fury descended into a brief shoving match composed mainly of elbows, which ceased abruptly when one of the guards turned.

"Some people juggle geese." River's lips moved slowly, and she stared straight in front of her, but Wash would've laid good odds her gaze didn't fall on the wall.

"That's my l - " he began, but she was talking again, her hands squirming against the cuffs. "They're here." A plummeting fear in her voice, that matched the fear and pain in those screams. But then something else anew imbued the words' quiet repeat, as her body calmed. "They're here..."

***

//"Once we're inside," Mal said, "We shoot to kill. Everything Alliance is a target. No mercy - we can't afford it. They're stronger'n us and they won't be hesitating. I want you all to understand that. Odds are bad enough as they are without having to watch the wounded we leave at our backs, and what's more anyone we leave can potentially identify at least Wash and Badger, and maybe more of us."//

The words reverberated in his head, following Mal and Jayne down the narrow, difficult access ladder set into the side of the elevator shaft. Simon tried to bury any thoughts along the lines of how he should have gone with Kaylee and Book that might - hypothetically - be trying to enter his mind. It didn't matter that a gun still felt unwieldy and alien in his hand, because what he was here for was River. When they found her, she might well need him. He'd seen her panicked, seen her when the medication failed. He had no particular faith in the ability of the captain or Jayne or even Zoe to coax her away with them if things were bad. At least... not in any fashion it didn't make him wince to contemplate.

He went a step too far on the ladder and trod on Jayne's fingers while Mal was still disembarking at the bottom. The mercenary cursed him in imaginative Chinese while he tried to stammer an apology.

"Bi zui!" Mal hissed up at them both.

There wasn't enough space for everyone on the floor of the shaft. Mal motioned Simon back up onto the ladder, replacing him with a gunman from Badger's group. "Now I'm guessing," he said, "that someone up there could've sent the alarm down, even if they didn't hear us coming. Reckon we best reckon on one heck of a welcoming committee waiting on the other side of these doors."

Jayne and Zoe moved like they read his mind and each other's, each taking up a wrench and a position either side of the doors. Mal produced some grenades, palmed one and handed the others to a tall, black-skinned gunman behind him for safekeeping. "Everyone keep clear the middle of the shaft." To Zoe and Jayne: "One... two..." They wrenched open the doors the barest fraction, not more than a hand's breadth. Mal activated the grenade and rolled it through. A shower of bullets pinged off the doors and, a few, the back of the shaft. Soon as Mal's hand was out of the way, Jayne and Zoe let the doors close. The explosion shook them violently a second later.

"Go!" Mal said, and this time the two of them hauled back hard, forcing the doors full open. Mal and those of Badger's gunmen on the ground poured through and took position, while Simon was jostled by those wanting to get down from the ladder.

"Oh, damn, this place smells bad," Jayne said.

"Think that might be Kaylee's doing," Mal called, already lost up ahead somewhere in the shifting dust from the explosion.

Simon found himself sticking close to Jayne, the only familiar body anywhere in his vicinity, proof enough that the world really had gone mad if that made him feel safer, and belatedly drew the gun he'd holstered in order to climb.

"Point that at somethin' in grey," Jayne growled, taking pause from shooting at a flash of uniform to eye the gun in Simon's hand distrustfully.

"I told you, you can trust me," Simon responded, annoyed. "It doesn't mean I'm not still angry with you, but I'm not about to shoot you."

"It ain't what you'd do on purpose worryin' me," Jayne said, sourly.

"Oh." There was no reply he could make to that.

The grenade had clearly done damage to masonry and men both, but in dealing with the immediate threat it had also brought more attention running down on them. Simon supposed there was nothing more like to catch the attention of reinforcements than very loud explosions. He flinched as Jayne, grinning like a kid in a toyshop, shot a man who'd ventured around the corner in front of them square in the face. Jayne enjoyed his work.

Zoe on the other hand was a businesslike killer, no emotion in her face when she pulled the trigger. Old soldier. Only Mal, against Simon's expectation, displayed the odd glimpse of reluctance or disgust in his face, if that was indeed what they were. Jayne and Zoe, he had seen go to war before, of course... He grimaced, remembering his own negligible contribution to that firefight, as well. Mal, he had seen only in scuffles and brawls.

Mal seemed to be noting with growing frustration the layout of the corridors he pressed them onward through. Finally, he swore. "Doesn't match the plans Kaylee dragged up near enough. Don't know where the hell we are. Time for a new plan." He called across to Jayne, "We need us one still living."

Jayne nodded, and lowered his aim only to get a scrape across his shoulder for his trouble. "Gorram it, Mal, I sure hope you're lettin' me kill this one later," he growled, advancing quickly to kick a gun out of a sprawled hand. The downed man's other hand had fingers pressed tight against a hole in his thigh, but it had missed shattering the bone and wasn't bleeding enough to have hit an artery. Only painful. Simon's own leg twinged in sympathy.

"We'll have to see about that." Mal hauled up the injured Alliance man and slammed him back against the wall. "Where are the prisoners? The girl and the two others?"

His answer was an unsurprising silence. Without hesitation, Mal blew a matching hole in the man's other thigh, nothing betrayed in his face at all now. "Where are they?" he demanded again, while the man hung gasping and Simon gaped. "Got no reason to kill you, you tell us straight. You don't... you still got two fine and undamaged arms I ain't touched, not to mention other appendages."

"Corridor C6, room 6B8," the man choked. Mal studied him a moment, gave him a tight nod, then raised his pistol and shot the man in the head. Simon rocked on his feet, feeling it like a physical punch. Nobody else reacted at all.

"Why did - ?" Simon began, angrily and more than a little self-consciously.

Mal's stare showed that dead something in his eyes that occasionally rose up to make itself clear. "He would've remembered me. Attention I don't need. Too easy to trace, records the Alliance still have on anyone who fought in the war. Would've left all of us in danger. No mercy, if you recall."

"Yes," Simon said slowly. He avoided looking down at the gun he hadn't fired yet.

***

Wash's heart all but stopped when he heard the distant gunfire. Sweet Jesus, they hadn't run, they hadn't... Were they insane? You didn't go up against the gorram Alliance armed with Jayne's fetishist gun collection and a box of old grenades the captain kept bolted to the roof of one of Serenity's crawlspaces. Not with their crew, less fighters than weren't. Not even if the preacher was really a rutting ninja assassin killing machine in that big secret past he'd been hiding from them all. There was just no way.

It had to be something else. It had to be.

Badger was watching the door, puzzled, and their guards' agitation was increasing, though they held to their posts. River had crossed her ankles and she gazed at the floor between them, her pursed lips exuding concentration. Concentration in her case could mean anything - for all Wash knew, she could be counting the molecules in the synthetic floor beneath their feet.

Her head jerked up sharply.

"Wouldn't want to forget me, so far from home," she blurted, like coming in on the middle of a speech, and her voice had a soft burr now that might've been spawned somewhere like Bradley or Londinium. "That's what she said, but you did, didn't you? Lost the thing, because after all a thing was all it was, wasn't it? A useless piece of a trinket and you could afford better yourself even then, even in those last days kitting out for the war. Thinking of a glory in body-counts like collecting scalps. She didn't mean anything, really, it was all in her head, not any in yours. Stupid girl. She sent you letters to the front, but the last one wasn't written by her. But sure, she didn't mean anything anyway, it could only be something about the fighting that set it in your thoughts and wouldn't let it leave. Why you took it out of that browncoat bitch who looked a little like her. Let the feel of her dying under you as you slit her throat after take all the memories away."

The guard her eyes pinned flinched and all but dropped the gun in his hands, and the other looked at him uneasily.

"What did you - ?" The first moved a step forward, out of position.

"Don't," the other said. "It's some kind of trick. You know what the orders are. No talking, no touching. You heard - " His head tipped toward the door, and he shuddered, a tiny convulsive judder that shook his shoulders.

"She... you can't..." Raw anguish and fury. He shook off his fellow's restraining hand and caught up River by a fistful of her hair, making her shriek and struggle and try to bite.

The bullet cut him down almost before the door had finished sliding back. The second guard managed to half raise his gun before Jayne, a step behind Mal, shot him in the head. The gun he was using didn't leave much of anything of the head, and Wash ducked away from the splatter that speckled his hair. Crazily, what came to his lips was "Must you?" in the same aggrieved sort of tone he'd use when Jayne exercised his lack of table manners.

"Well," the mercenary said, stroking his gun like he was telling it it was a good girl. "There's a nice thank-you. Think we should shut the door again and turn right around, Mal?"

Mal had a keycard dangling on a chain and what looked like someone's finger in the hand that wasn't gripped around his pistol. He ignored Jayne, kneeling next to a fallen guard to search for keys, finding them on the second guard. A fighter Wash didn't recognise backpedalled past the open door shooting Alliance men, and Simon scooted in after, bent over almost double, crossing straight to his sister's side.

"What's going on?" Wash asked with some disbelief, his voice rising to a higher pitch than he generally considered could pass as manly.

"Cavalry, Wash," Mal said, matter-of-fact, jiggling the keys around to a right-looking selection, hampered by the fact he kept a hold on his gun. He hauled on Wash's shoulder to turn him around and worked on the cuffs a moment; swore and had to switch keys twice before they finally fell loose. He moved on to River, and Simon folded his sister into his side as soon as she was loose, his body blocking her from the open door.

"Your people... and my people," Badger said, incredulous, as Mal set him loose. "Shooting up the gorram Alliance? What the hell have you done?"

"Saved your sorry backside, among other things," Mal pointed out.

"But why?" Wash asked.

"Needed the extra men - " He broke off. "Best of limited options. No time for talkin'. Reckon we should start moving about now." A renewed frenzy of gunfire and a warning shout - Zoe's voice, Wash recognised, and his heart jumped with equal joy and fear - turned Mal's head toward the door.

"Definitely about now," the captain amended.

***

"Go!" Mal pushed Zoe ahead of him, seeing as how the husband she was supporting looked like he'd collected a bit of Alliance justice about the face. Ahead of them, Jayne and one of Badger's folk led the way in a deadly partnership, Simon and River hanging just behind along with Badger, who'd armed himself with a dead fellow's gun.

"Where the ruttin' hell are they all coming from?" Jayne growled.

"Must be more down here than we thought. Maybe another entrance somewhere," Zoe said breathlessly, turning a moment to help return fire at those coming from the corridor behind the cells. The henchman of Badger's who'd been helping out at the rear was gurgling on the floor, shot through his throat. Most of the rest of them were up ahead somewhere, probably halfway to the surface by now.

"You concentrate on getting Wash and River out," Mal said again to Zoe.

She nodded tightly, and turned and tried to hustle her husband along faster. And it wasn't playing fair with her, Mal knew full well. But he needed them out and safe to get everyone else flying free, and things were starting to get themselves just a little bit too frantic.

He ducked as a hail of fire came at him from an unexpected direction; a corridor they must've diverted 'round trying to cut them off, and come almost too late. He sure wished he had a better idea 'bout the layout of the base. He tried to return fire with no cover to speak of. A shot drew a fiery scrape along his ribs. One, two, three more shots of his own, and two of the uniforms on the ground, then the hollow note of an empty chamber he could least afford right then.

"Take him alive," ordered a voice that sent a chill through him, and while he backed away like a fool with his empty gun in his hand, able to do precisely nothing as they abandoned their cover and approached, someone fired an air compression rifle. The impact knocked him into the wall and he rebounded off it to roll over the floor, landing almost at their advancing feet.

Feet clad in black, and not Alliance grey. He blinked, trying to focus his eyes to look upwards. Saw only the blur of a huge blue hand as it descended.

***

"Nice flyin'," Kaylee said, as Book finally managed to get the shuttle righted and the floor and the ceiling resumed their more usual positions.

"I lost them, didn't I?" He could feel the sweat starting to dry on his brow.

"Yep. That's... what I meant." She nodded encouragingly. "Sure you don't want me to take..." She faltered, slumping in her seat, and her hair hung limply around her suddenly pale face as she seemed to concentrate hard on breathing, which she did in deep gasps. "Not... feeling so well, preacher."

Book nodded grimly, and reached across to the passenger seat to gently pat her arm, although he had to cut the gesture of comfort short to ensure they didn't end up upside-down again - or, in fact, a pretty fireworks display and a burnt smear on the side of a building. "Simon mentioned that would happen. It'll pass."

"I sure hope he stuck a 'soon' on the end of that." Kaylee curled over miserably, then jerked to one side and retched onto the shuttle floor. Book winced at the noises. The smell wasn't the most pleasant in the confines of the small shuttle, either. "Sorry."

He sighed and smiled. "Not to worry... I think Jayne pulled cleaning duties, this week."

She managed a weak giggle, but it faded fast. "Hope he's still alive to do 'em," she said.

***

"Not working for nobody," Mal said, gasping against the grip the two feds had on each of his arms. He surreptitiously studied the blue-gloved freaks' blank, set faces. "Just came in to spring the boss, is all."

The nearer of the two, the tall one - his lip twisted. Kinda dismissive of a move, like he really didn't care. Like he knew he already had the answers. "Your boss, then?"

Mal thought about it for all of a second, then shook his head fractionally, not letting go the man's eye. Setting a trail to Badger would betray them all in the end, anyway. Even if...

"'Badger'," the fellow said smugly. He drew something out of his coat; toyed with it in his hand. It wasn't a gun. "The man your 'boss' was working with. Malcolm Reynolds. What do you know about him?"

"Reynolds? Hun dan Independent type with a giant-size stick up his pigu? Boss used him the odd job here and there, is all. When he was hard up, you know?" His voice cracked as the man on his right twisted his arm harder. "Why? You got some trash you need to offload on the cheap?"

"As it happens," the second of the men said, amused.

His fellow freak raised the thing he'd been toying with, snapping it level in his hand a few feet in front of Mal's face. The men holding his arms slammed him back against the corridor wall hard enough to daze, then got clear fast.

"What the hell - ?" Mal began, staring at the thing, and coughing a bit of a nervous laugh. It didn't look like any kind of a weapon. "That s'posed to frighten me?"

There was something dribbling down his upper lip. He raised his fingers to it, confused. Felt an odd pressure building inside his head as he brought them away painted with blood.

***

"No... no... no..." Without warning, River began to struggle in his grasp, as they waited tucked into the side of the elevator. Zoe and Wash were already on the ladder and starting the climb. Badger crouched at the other side of the door with his stolen gun. Jayne leaned against the wall a way down the corridor, looking uneasily back where they'd just come from.

"We're getting out of here," Simon told her, setting his hands to her shoulders, trying to quiet her panic.

"No!" she screamed, shoving out of his grip entirely and falling to her knees on the floor, in too-full view if anyone were to round the corner and get a shot off before Jayne could drop them. Her eyes were so wide they all but bugged out of her head, and her hands convulsed against the floor, fingers scraping so hard he saw nails splinter. "The captain..."

"What's up with her?" Badger asked, jerking his head. Almost looking like he wanted to go to her, but didn't dare.

"I - " They had no time to spare for Badger. "River...?"

She screamed, her hands reaching up to her face and twining, tugging, in her hair.

"Zoe!" Simon spun, shouting up the ladder, changing tack. He could see her boot heels in the dark shaft, above Wash's broader form. "Zoe! Something's wrong. I think Mal - "

River's cry took on a raw note of furious antagonism, rising to drown him out.

***

Mal was slumped, sliding slowly down the wall and tasting blood, feeling it thick and cloying 'gainst the back of his throat, when his tormentor wavered, hands rising to his head, giving a rattling cry.

He had enough left in him to lash out with his foot, twisting it around the man's leg and yanking it out from under him. He spun, falling, arching the device over his blue-gloved partner and the Alliance men behind him. Off-balance from the manoeuvre, and in the absence of the immobilising pressure the weapon had seemed to induce in every cell in his body, Mal slid all the way to the floor.

The Alliance folks were complaining mightily at getting a taste of their own medicine, and Mal didn't feel sorry for them one bit. His vision was a kind of hazy red-edged affair, and nerve-memory of the pain still lingered throughout his body, but the overall weakness he felt was the only thing that threatened to kill him now. He clawed his way along the floor as those behind really started screaming, getting well clear before he tried to stand. Tried, couldn't, glanced back to see that the faces of those he'd left behind him were masks of blood, their bodies twitching in what sure as hell looked like the last spasms of life... He scrubbed a hand over his own face, stared at the blood that decorated it in small streaks... and continued clawing his way back to the elevator, one hand-span's scrap of ground at a time.

Pressed himself into the floor and stilled as running feet approached, but raised his head as he heard Jayne swear. Simon, coming out of the merc's shadow, drew an audible breath.

"Captain?" The doctor was down at his side in an instant. "What happened? River wouldn't let - "

Mal caught Jayne's ankle as he made to explore the way behind him. "Don't go back there."

"No," Jayne agreed, looking freaked. He knelt down, shoving the doctor out of the way in the process, then looked down at Mal and the gun in his hand, and screwed up his face in reluctance before dumping the monstrosity - Vera - into Simon's empty arms, clearing his own to gather up Mal.

"Wait," Simon protested, casting the weapon one helpless frown then ignoring it. "He's hurt - I don't know that this is - Jayne, he's bleeding from his eyes - "

"No time," Jayne said, voicing Mal's thoughts exactly. "Take a good hold of Vera, doctor. Cap'n's a heavy sumbitch. Won't be able to drag him and keep the feds off us at the same time."

Simon nodded and gamely tried to set his hands correctly on the weapon and hold it like he was threatening. Mal loosed a ragged laugh.

When he was hoisted over Jayne's shoulder, he curled his fingers convulsively in the damp cloth of the merc's T-shirt, fighting the sensation of vertigo the motion brought on, and didn't pass out.

***

Chapter 5

"Come in, Serenity," Inara tried again, with growing impatience and - maybe - just a touch of concern she would admit to. "This is shuttle one, coming in to dock... Request acknowledgement... Damn it, Mal, answer me."

But there was no answer. True enough, the dawn was still a clear band on the horizon, but Mal usually kept a watch while on a world like Persephone, even if he wasn't awake himself already. And she could see that shuttle 2 was missing. Biting down on her lower lip, she punched in the automated docking codes and guided the shuttle back to its familiar rest. Serenity accepted her, locking them into place with a mechanical grind followed by a swift, sharp 'ker-chung' that reverberated through the smaller ship. Inara finished powering down, gathered her robe tighter around herself as she stood, and caught up a gold rope-belt to tie around it. Then she headed purposefully through the door that marked the boundary where her domain ended and Mal's began.

Serenity seemed to be sleeping soundly, her power on low. Inara trod the walkway, bare feet casting a dull metallic ring down into the void of the cargo bay below with every fall. She aimed for the passenger quarters first, and knew there was something wrong when she found them dark and empty, doors gaping open. Shepherd Book might conceivably have taken the time to visit the local abbey, but there was no reason for Simon or River to leave the ship at all - and every reason for them not to.

She found weapons laid out in the kitchen, but what was there looked like the dregs someone had decided not to arm themselves with. "Mal?" she called, trying anyway. "Malcolm!" Further on up the ship, the crew quarters were a match for the passenger ones, and the bridge was silent and unoccupied.

"Oh, no," Inara muttered, and gave a small sigh. "What have you involved yourself in now?" She stood on the empty bridge, her robe no protection against the shiver that seized her. Hesitating, she wondered what to do - if there was anything she could do.

But even as she lingered, she heard a faint, familiar sound resonate throughout the ship, and felt the equally faint vibration that partnered it travel up into her bare feet. Shuttle 2 had just docked.

Taking a steadying breath, Inara returned along the length of the ship, and in her haste almost bumped into Shepherd Book as he emerged from the shuttle port, Kaylee supported at his shoulder.

"What happened?" was her instant shocked reaction, but Book was already shaking his head against her initial fear.

"She's not hurt. Only had a little too much to drink earlier tonight, and... it's complicated."

"Shh, sweetheart," Inara said, folding Kaylee into her arms as the girl moaned unhappily. "And the captain?" she asked, already able to see the shuttle was empty behind Book. "Where's Mal? And everyone else?"

The preacher smiled, grim worry underlying. "There was some Alliance trouble. River was spotted and taken. Captain's out springing her and Wash now."

"Against the Alliance?" She remembered the scatter of weapons on the table. "Has he lost his mind completely? You're surely not telling me that Mal's gone into an Alliance enforcement station with all guns blazing?"

"Had to get River," Kaylee mumbled, trying to straighten. "And Wash. Simon and Zoe... well. And, hey, need to fly this thing, right? 'Sides, it woulda been all of us, he said. Every one of us with a price on our heads sooner or later, we didn't go. They'd tell 'em. Wouldn't be able to help it, in the end."

"Yes," Inara agreed breathlessly, feeling very cold as the full danger crashed over her. "Yes, it would be. So Mal..."

Book laid a hand gently on her shoulder. "I'm sure they'll be - "

The main door clanked below and Zoe's voice unmistakeably floated up, issuing orders. Inara laughed weakly. "Don't tell me, preacher... you have informers in very high places."

He glanced innocently upward. "Perhaps."

"Oh, good." At her breast, Kaylee gave a little sigh of relief and relaxed so much Inara thought for a moment she'd passed out, and struggled to stop her ending up on the floor because little Kaylee was heavier than she looked.

"Here." The shepherd awkwardly took Kaylee back, and inclined his head down toward the growing commotion in the cargo bay. "I'll get her to the kitchen and pour some coffee into her. You go."

"Thank you."

As she began to descend, she could see Simon and River dragging something dark inside, pulling it into the shadows to the edge of the bay. They both looked unusually animated, their voices hushed but clearly delivered with fervour.

"It's necessary - " Inara caught, as River tugged at whatever it was. Her face pinched in annoyance, she glared up at her brother.

Simon spoke so quietly she heard only fragments. "I don't see how... the captain... we should at least..." The doctor dropped their burden entirely and halted, his open palms underlining his objections as he waved them in helpless protest.

"Simon!" His sister continued to struggle alone until he reluctantly resumed his aid.

Inara stepped off the ladder, staring over her shoulder at the pair and wondering if she ought to intervene. Then Wash stomped in, complaining loudly to Zoe over his shoulder, and she had to sidestep in fear of a collision. The marks on his face momentarily wiped all else from her thoughts.

"I mean, why? What is this? Is it me - you don't think it's something about me, do you? What if I have... 'torture me' vibes? I'm just saying, it could be a growing problem."

Zoe caught him at the base of the stairs. The smile on her face had anger simmering not far beneath it. "Their problem, when I catch up to them, dear." She leaned in to him, faltering her purposeful stride to cup her husband's bruised face and kiss him. She cut the gesture short and broke away apologetically as he flinched.

"Ow," he said pointedly, and pulled her back for a more comprehensive effort.

"Wash." Mal's voice parted them again, and Inara spun, her chest feeling tight at the affirmation he was still alive. "Need you up on the bridge getting us all far away from this rock. Time for kissing later. Take us up out of the world."

"Yes, sir." He rolled his eyes, then caught Zoe's. The contact stretched like elastic between them as he headed up the steps away from her.

"We ain't clear yet," Mal said, to nobody and everybody, as Wash disappeared. "Not by a long way." He was hanging heavily off Jayne's arm, worrying traces of dried blood on his face. "The door, Jayne."

Jayne dutifully peeled the captain off his shoulder and sort of draped him against the wall while he went to do as ordered. Mal clutched at the wall a little frantically for a moment before seeming to steady, by which time Inara was already at his side with a supporting arm to offer. "What happened to you?"

"Some kind of new Alliance toy. Balance is still a bit - " He almost toppled over, trying to turn to address her, and she ended up staggering with most of his weight. She wrapped her arms around his chest and tried to right him again. "Like I said." He was half laughing, albeit a wheezing laugh. "I'm all right." His arm crept around her waist, strictly of necessity, the other rising to seize the fingers that reached for his face. She couldn't help but notice the tremor in his limbs.

She rolled her eyes. "Sometimes I think you do this on purpose," she said, and with some difficulty because Mal was heavy, as she already knew from a certain swordfight. "So... what happened to your promise you wouldn't be doing this, this trip?"

He tried to shrug and it proved ill-advised. "It was out of my hands, and... you can't be blaming me for this one?"

Jayne slammed the doors shut behind them and buzzed up to Wash that they were all locked up and ready to scoot, sooner the better. He almost hadn't even cut communication before Serenity gave that familiar shudder that meant her engine had started up. Then Inara had to fight to keep herself and her wayward captain upright against the sensation of take-off in addition to all the rest.

"I'll consider special dispensation this one time," she said. "But someone will have to do me the kindness of telling me exactly what's been going on first."

"If you can be getting me up to the kitchen and a decently fierce mug of coffee," Mal said, with tired good nature, "I might even have to start thinking about proposing."

Inara winced, and avoided looking him in the eye as she helped him on his way.

***

"Never goes smooth," Mal said to himself. He slumped at the kitchen table, a hand-held cortex link and an empty mug in front of him. Seeing how the sensation of vertigo wasn't showing signs of going away any time soon, he had both elbows planted firm on the table top out of a general distrust of his own balance - and the world at large, that seemed dead set against the idea of staying still. He had a headache and a worsening temper not helped by his vision keeping blurring.

A tentative touch on his arm drew his attention from scouring the cortex.

"Anything?" Kaylee asked.

"Only Simon and River's old warrants."

She tapped his arm again as he bowed his head back down. "Could take hours," she offered. "Days, maybe. You know that. Won't do any good you keepin' starin' away at that thing, cap'n."

He pushed it away and sighed; broke Kaylee's grip only to wrap her fingers around his with slow, deliberate motions that didn't upset his head, and held her hand over the table. "I know... you feeling any better yet, mei mei?"

"A bit. How 'bout you?" She seemed faintly embarrassed to be asked.

"Just tired and dizzy is all. The no-sleep issue probably not helping matters." He squeezed her hand. "I'm sorry, Kaylee. Wouldn't have done it if we hadn't sore needed you up and about."

"No, no," she told him a little woozily. "I'm just... I feel so bad I got drunk like that. Nothing like bein' real useless when you all need - "

Her bitterness surprised him, and he cut her off quick. "You weren't useless, girl. Where would we have been without you and your planning? River and Wash would still be in there and us all with a ticket to an Alliance jail. I reckon you and Simon might just be a right match after all, criminal masterminds both." He squeezed her fingers again and smiled.

"Thanks, cap'n." She relaxed forward, smiling, setting her head to the table and splaying her hair over their joined hands, and rolled her head slowly to the side to look up at him. "That's real sweet of you."

"Nothing but the truth. 'Sides which," he added, "not one of us was expectin' our night of living the finer life would end in gorram firefights and close as damn it all-out warfare... though, thinking on it, I have no idea why. Runs smooth as clockwork, this tweaked luck of mine."

Kaylee laughed softly. Her fingers moved lazily over his. Her hair tickled as she moved. "Your hands're shakin'," she murmured.

"Yeah." He returned his attention to the cortex link, brushing strands of Kaylee's hair out of the way. After a few minutes, he felt her grip relax, and heard the rhythm of her breathing change.

It wasn't much later when he heard footsteps and looked up to see Inara standing in the doorway. Her eyes fell on Kaylee and her smile softened. "The snoring wounded. I wondered what you'd be up to."

"Being 'up to' anything mostly involves falling right down again at the moment." Mal smiled back, then as he saw her expression change added, "It's improved some, don't worry. Reckon I'll be fine after I get some sleep."

"Which you probably should be doing," Inara remarked.

He pushed the cortex link away again, this time with purpose, switching it off. "Still not sure I'm up to standing and carrying Kaylee to her quarters, though," he continued. "I don't suppose you could - "

"When I mention 'Companion training', that didn't generally include weights," Inara prodded gently.

" - see if you can't rustle up Jayne," Mal finished.

She laughed, and her hand trailed over his shoulder in a vague pat that was in danger of being something else as she drifted past and left the kitchen again, a soft, "I'll have a look," floating in her wake.

He leaned back in the chair - but resumed his former position post-haste because despite what he'd told Inara, the world still felt none too secure. As days went, he reflected, he'd had better. Couldn't even say they were still free and flying - everyone might have gotten away intact, but that, it could be a while before they knew with any certainty.

Zoe had taken Wash off to their quarters soon as they broke atmo and he'd set course. Simon and River had disappeared somewhere soon as they'd come on board, and about that, he should probably worry - 'specially as he wasn't too sure where Jayne had gotten himself to either; he could faintly hear Inara calling his name.

It was Book she returned with, though, a short time later. The preacher gathered Kaylee up with some effort, albeit respectably little for his age. He shot a tight smile back at Mal, a look that lingered an odd length of time for a man who wasn't any spring chicken hauling a girl who wasn't any lightweight, and then made his way with difficulty - not up toward the crew quarters with their troublesome ladders, but down the ship to the guest rooms.

"I better go with them and get her settled down," Inara said, and followed. After a while, he heard their voices faintly in discussion, too faint for him to make the words out. But he had a notion from something in Inara's tone that they were talking about him. Shortly after, the voices died and slow, measured footsteps returned to the kitchen. Book entered, walked to the chair at the foot of the table, and seated himself directly opposite Mal.

"Something wrong, preacher?" he asked after a moment. "There some reason you're sat there studying me like I should be in a sideshow?"

Book folded his arms on the table before him, interlacing his fingers. "I'm just wondering if you shouldn't see the doctor. Have him check you out. It hasn't escaped my notice you still seem to be having some trouble."

"It's a bit of dizziness. It'll wear off. Already has been." Mal sighed. Last thing he was feeling like was subjecting himself to Simon's concerned testing and prodding. "...But you're right, preacher. Weapon none of us recognise and all, it's probably for the best." He grimaced as he moved in his seat and the world reeled, again, and he looked up archly at Book. "Mighty good of you volunteerin' to lend a hand."

***

Through the open door of her room, River could be seen sitting cross-legged on the bed. Her back was very straight, and she turned Badger's hat carefully between her hands. There was something dark lying across the bedclothes in front of her.

Mal had gone past, leaning heavily on the preacher, before the picture in its entirety quite registered. He faltered, and he and Book backpedalled to stand and stare in through the open door.

"I'm not seeing this," Mal said. "Tell me, shepherd - you reckon hallucinations would be a symptom of this thing I got zapped with?"

"If they are," Book said slowly. "I think I must have gotten a dose of it, too."

River was sitting on the bed with Badger - fully clothed and thoroughly unconscious, thank God - sprawled on top of the sheets.

"River," Mal said firmly, catching her attention. The hat stopped turning. Dark eyes silently ate into him. "You care to explain how come Badger's in your bed and on my ship?"

Simon and Jayne, a little way further along the corridor, broke off an argument when they heard the sharp question, finally noticing he was standing there, and what he was standing seeing. He turned from River's uncooperative silence to them, and Book struggled a moment to keep him upright as balance took a holiday. "Why do we have Badger?" he persevered. "Jayne? You feel like shedding some light on this?"

"Uh..." Jayne started, then broke off to get in Simon's face and hiss, "Told you." He looked back at Mal, flustered. "Weren't me, Mal. Hell, I'd be glad to see the back of the little cuss. Moonbeam bagged him all her own self, I swear. Got this one to help her drag him aboard." He jerked his thumb toward Simon, then leered with ugly mirth, like he just really couldn't help himself. "Reckon she's plannin' to keep him like some sort of pet. Took a right shine to him, seems."

"My sister has not - " Simon began angrily, rising to defend River's honour.

Mal halted him with a raised hand. "While I get the point, even considerin' the delivery, that bein' a mind-reading genius with a couple of loose screws in the brain pan don't make her dead below the waist... Badger?" He cast the two a pained look. "Girl, are you off your nut? Well, I mean..." He floundered.

River rolled her eyes and lifted them, and started to count the stains or the ceiling or some such, but chose to shed no more light on the subject.

"Either way," Mal said, collecting his thoughts with some difficulty. "That is not the issue. The issue would be that Badger there is unlikely to be too happy when he eventually wakes up. The issue would also be that I do not go 'round abducting folk I need to do business with - or at all - "

"He knows she's worth money," Simon pointed out nervously.

Mal stopped. He opened his mouth, and then paused, realising he really didn't have the energy or patience left for this, not to mention that it might well have actually been the best option in the circumstances. "Fine," he said, swallowing the protest. "Just keep him out of my way and keep him out of trouble when he wakes up, all right? And her, too. I got too many other things on my mind to be dealing with right now."

He took a breath. "Simon. You've doctorin' to do. Preacher's got some concerns 'bout this Alliance thing I got zapped with."

"Oh! Yes, I'm... I'm very sorry, captain. I should have - "

"You had to deal with your sister's yen to add kidnapping to her genius portfolio. I understand... Jayne?"

"What, Mal?" The merc still looked guilty. But then he usually was, of something.

Mal pointed. "Chaperone them. Doctor's got work to do." He killed Simon's protest with a glower.

Jayne's face fell, and he looked blankly through the doorway at River, who gave him one of those sickly sweet smiles that usually spelled trouble for the recipient.

"Aww... gorram it, Mal! I tol' you, I ain't done nothing!"

END

NOTE: If this seems an ending that leaves some threads hanging, that's because I have written another story that directly continues after this one. I'll upload it here soon.

Back