Amid the soft sounds filling the warm April night air, two shadows detach themselves from the darkness behind the chimney and creep silently over to the window to their left, peering inside at the form of the young girl lying tangled in her sheets fast asleep. Looking at one another and nodding in a wordless signal, the smaller of the two silhouettes pulls out a thin tube filled with a powerful grease and fills the seam of the window with it, and then lifts it slowly until it's wide enough for both of them to fit through.
The first figure climbs through and lands on the carpet without so much as a whisper, but when the larger of the two attempts the same maneuver they instead fall inside the room and land with a thud that echoes through the entire house.
Gorram it!" is the murmur that emanates from the man on the floor, but he falls silent at a kick from his female partner as she watches the girl closely for any signs that she's waking. When all she does is mutter a little and turn over in her sleep the woman lets out a little sigh of relief, but still glares at her partner as he pushes himself to his feet.
Pulling out a gun-shaped tool with a syringe loaded into it instead of bullets, the woman walks over to the bed and presses it against the girl's neck, pulling the trigger and letting out her breath at the sound of the tranquilizer being successfully injected. Sometimes the vacci-guns tended to misfire, and if that had happened the girl would surely have woken up and sounded the alarm as soon as she saw the two strangers standing in her room.
Tucking the vacci-gun back into its makeshift holster, the woman waves her partner over.
'Pick her up, will you Jayne?" she whispers. "I'm gonna go outside and radio the captain to tell him the job's done." The man known as Jayne nods, scooping the girl into his arms still bundled up in her sheets, but stares down at her with no small amount of disbelief.
"Hey, Zoe, you sure this is the runaway servant we were supposed to catch?" he asks, making sure to keep his voice low. "She looks awful young to have been hired by Badger as one of his workers."
Zoe looks up from the radio she had been whispering into and nods quickly. "This is definitely the place Badger told us about. And besides, it ain't our place to be doubtin' what the cap'n tells us. Let's just get her back on board before the rest of the house wakes up." With that she clips the radio back onto her belt and climbs back through the window, holding out her arms and motioning for Jayne to pass the girl out to her. He does so carefully, and then follows her out with a great deal less trouble than he had coming in.
They hop down off the roof, Jayne first to take the girl from Zoe and then Zoe following, and start off over the hill to their Mule. Before he climbs aboard, Jayne settles the girl behind him in the rear seats, and then they take off over a mile of scruffy forest and briars until they arrive at a large clearing and the ship that awaits them.
Zoe raises her radio to her lips once more. "Open the hatch, Wash, we're comin' aboard." The huge metal ramp lowers to the ground, and the Mule glides inside to settle on the metal deck without a sound.
"We're on," Zoe says, and through the radio she hears a relieved sigh.
"Thank God. Prepare to get off this godforsaken rock and back to Persephone, fast as I can make this baby fly."
Zoe smiles gently. "That's my husband. I'll be up as soon as we get our 'guest' squared away."
She clips the radio to her hip and sighs in relief as the engines start up and the ship begins to rise from the ground, taking them back into the black where they belong. Turning to Jayne she says, "C'mon, let's get this girl settled in her cabin so we can tell the captain how the job went."
Jayne shoots her a wry grin, saying, "Yeah, it'll be a pleasant change for him to hear that a job actually went the way it was supposed to, 'stead of almost gettin' everyone on this boat damn near killed." He turns to pick up the girl, only to freeze and stare in astonishment at the prisoner which until now had been merely a mysterious girl who felt a little too light and looked a little too small to be an indentured servant.
In reality she is a young woman of about eighteen, with rosy cheeks shadowed by long, dark lashes, and a full kissable mouth that hints at innocence and vulnerability. Her hands are soft and pale, contrasting sharply with the peeling black polish coating her nails. Her face is a mask of calm, most likely due to the tranquilizer running through her veins, and Jayne looks back up at Zoe again.
"You sure this girl's a servant? She don't have the hands of one, and she ain't got no lines on her face from pain or nothin'." Zoe walks over to him in exasperation.
"Look Jayne, I already told you, she's—" Zoe stops in the middle of her sentence at the sight of the girl, and her face wrinkles into one of intense concentration. Her eyes take in the soft hands, the innocent face, and the rosy cheeks with alarm. "She can't be a servant," she whispers. "She just ain't cut out for that type of work."
Jayne nods. "That's what I thought. So my question is: why're we pickin' up some girl who's an indentured servant but don't look like one, and who looks more like some governor's daughter who ain't seen a day of work in her life?"
Zoe looks up to meet his gaze, her own brown eyes mirroring the confusion reflected in Jayne's, and shakes her head as if to discourage an annoying fly. "It ain't our place to question the cap'n," she says, but even she doesn't sound like she believes it anymore. "We just have to get this girl into her quarters and wait to reach Persephone. Maybe we'll see what's up once we talk to Badger."
Jayne, still looking worried, shrugs and follows her into the guest quarters, walking through the door she opens for him and tossing the girl down onto the bed unceremoniously, causing the sheets that had been bundled around her to slide down to her waist. "You caused us a world of trouble, little girl," he mutters, but as he starts to walk out the door he freezes, whipping his head back around as interest flares to life in his eyes.
"Wo de tien a." he breathes on a sigh, his eyes glued to that area somewhere above her stomach and below her chin. "She ain't got no clothes on!" Turning back toward the girl with an eager grin, Jayne fails to realize Zoe coming up behind him until she reaches out and grabs his ear in a grip of death.
"Come on, Jayne. Cap'n said no one was to enter or leave the room without express permission. And I don't think that girl would appreciate you entering her while she's drugged."
Still being pulled by his ear, Jayne puts on an indignant face. "I wasn't gonna do anythin' to her!" Shooting a look back toward the closed door retreating down the corridor, Jayne mutters too quietly for Zoe to hear, "Not yet, at least."
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"Cap'n, I've seen plenty of servants in my day, plenty of nobility too from a distance, and this girl ain't a hired hand by a long shot." Zoe sits down on the arm of her husband's chair and puts her arm around his shoulders, staring up at the other man standing across from her with accusation clear in her gaze. "What've you got us into this time?"
Across from Zoe, the man who had been previously leaning against the wall stands up straight with indignation. His brown coat missing from his shoulders and thereby ridding him of his usual defensive pose in which he grips the collar of said coat, he instead hooks his thumbs behind his suspenders and rocks himself forward in his boots in an effort to appear imposing. "What I got us into? Badger was the one who contacted me, if you will remember. And I was also the one sayin' no up until you told me to agree to deal with him."
Zoe stands as well, removing her hand from Wash's shoulder as she does so. "And I said that only in an attempt to improve relations between you and him and to make up for the lack of coin or food on this boat, if you will remember!"
Mal's face grows stormy, his gray eyes narrowing. "And I think you'd do well to remember exactly whose boat this is, Corporal!"
"Hey, hey, hey!" Wash jumps in at that moment, rising from his chair to stand between the two of them and mediate. "Mal? Zoe? I don't really want to be involved in a firefight right now, so why don't we go and see the girl instead of all standing here arguing, huh? That work for you guys?"
Still glaring daggers, Mal nods curtly, and Zoe does the same, smoothing her face into its usual composure. "Fine," she says. "Let's go and see her, then. And then you can tell me, Seargent, why a girl that looks like a governor's daughter is being returned to Badger as hired help." With this she turns and stalks out of the bridge with the grace of an angry feline, and Wash whistles under his breath.
"I get to have sex with Zoe tonight.." he hums tunelessly, and falls in step behind her with his eyes remaining glued to her ass.
Mal rolls his eyes, no longer angry, and follows the other two through the hatch and down the stairs toward the guest quarters with a strange sense of dread growing in his stomach. There's always somethin'. He thinks in despair. Why can't things ever go smooth?