Ends with a Horse, Part 2a
Saffron's visit has left lasting damage.
A few hours later, after checking on the situation in his own bunk, Jayne looked in on the bridge to find Zoe, River and Mal still hard at work checking Serenity's flight computers and electronic systems for signs of sabotage.
"Found anything?"
Mal shook his head, with a thoroughly discontented look on his face.
"Well, that's good, ain't it? Y'all been lookin' on them computers for hours now."
"Yeah, we been lookin', and it ain't a bit good that we ain't found nothin'," Mal replied. "We know Saffron was on this bridge at least twice. Once when she come up through the crawl space, when River was here—and that's all manner of disturbing, in and of itself, 'cause if Saffron had access to the crawl space, then there's all manner of places on this boat we gotta search afore we can sound the all-clear. River stopped her, that time—"
River gave Jayne an evil grin and pointed her finger, gun-fashion, directly at him.
"—but I know for a fact she was here one other time, unsupervised."
"How d'ya know that, Cap?" Jayne inquired.
"She got into my bunk, Jayne," Mal answered. Recollections of discovering Saffron naked in his bed came to mind, and he willed himself not to blush. Apparently without success, since Zoe was giving him one of those looks, and River started tittering uncontrollably.
"Wish she woulda come naked into my bunk, 'stead a your'n," Jayne said with a smirk.
"No you don't," Mal shot back. "Naked had nothin' to do with it. It was just a cover-up." Gorrammit, he was turnin' red anyway.
"A cover-up, sir?" Zoe inquired archly. "Hmm…a naked cover-up. Bears some thinkin' on."
"Bares some—" River began.
"闭嘴 Bìzuǐ!" Mal retorted, testily. "Y'all are missing the point, here. I don't think for a minute Saffron was in my bunk 'cause she wanted my.…Point is, she searched my bunk, coulda stole something I ain't thought of missing yet, coulda planted something I ain't found yet. And she did it when my hatch was locked." He let it sink in for a moment. "She came up here to the bridge to override the lock. That means she accessed the main computers, overrode security, and coulda got into just about anything in our flight hardware and software. Kaylee's gonna come up here, soon as she's done scouring the engine room, and look for anything suspicious in the hardware line. It's up to us to find the software sabotage. She coulda planted a virus or a worm, a Trojan horse, some kind of malware…"
"Malware," echoed Jayne. He turned to Zoe and River. "Is that, like, the Cap's personal software or something?"
Zoe rolled her eyes. "No, it's destructive software."
"From mal. Bad. In the Latin." River saw Jayne wasn't getting it, and repeated, "Mal is 'bad' in Latin."
"'Course I'm bad in Latin," Mal quipped. "Never studied the gorram language. I'm fluent in Chinese and English, of course. Even know a few phrases in—"
"Cap'n," Kaylee's voice over the comm interrupted. "I found something that don't belong here in the engine room. Wanna come have a look?"
. . .
"It's the only important piece of equipment in the engine room that she could actually reach from the door. 'Cause believe me, Cap'n, I didn't let her get no farther than the threshold."
"I'm sure you didn't, Kaylee," Mal replied as he inspected the thin strip of electronics that Kaylee had removed from the switchboard near the press regulator. "She musta been prepared ahead of time. She only had a second or two to plant it before you confronted her."
"She done screwed up my engine too many times already. I worried for my girl every time I couldn't be here to defend her. That insult-slinging 骚屄sāobī, that 妓女 在 地獄 jìnǚ zài dìyù…"
"Kaylee, I'm right shocked. You don't never call people suchlike names, not even when they deserve it."
"Well, she deserved it, Cap'n, believe you me." Kaylee was uncompromising.
"Kaylee, I ain't never seen you like this." Mal wondered how Kaylee, his sweet sunshine 妹妹 mèimei, had suddenly grown this spine of cold steel. It was an aspect of Kaylee he had not seen before, and he wasn't entirely sure it was a welcome development. What had Saffron done to her? He himself wouldn't never dare step between Kaylee and an engine she loved, but he sensed that this was more than just Kaylee defending her ship. "What did that evil snake do to you?"
"Don't really want to talk about it, Cap'n," Kaylee answered.
Mal sighed to himself. Kaylee wouldn't get over it, whatever it was, until she talked it out of her system. He hated to see her suffering and closing herself off with her hurt, unwilling to accept comfort. She was acting…well, like he acted. And it weren't a real good way to get better of your hurts; he knew that from personal experience. "Well, how's about we talk about something else, then?" he said, attempting to honor her request. He gave her a kind smile. "Why don't you tell me 'bout that pretty ring you got on your finger?" Kaylee still hadn't said anything to the others about her and Simon.
To his surprise, Kaylee burst into tears. "Said I don't—want—to—talk about it!" she gasped between sobs.
"妹妹 Mèimei, now there, 妹妹 mèimei!" He gathered Kaylee in for a hug, and held her, rocking, soothing, patting her back. After a bit, when her sobs had subsided some, he ventured, "I apologize, sweetheart. I didn't realize I was touchin' on a sore subject. Thought to be talkin' on something cheersome."
"Oh, 哥哥 gēgē!" Kaylee began, but got caught up in tears again and buried her face on his shoulder. Mal could only hold her comfortingly and pat her back gently, as he wondered miserably what could have gone wrong between her and Simon. Mal figured that Simon had proposed, and that Kaylee had accepted. She was wearing the ring, after all. Why was it a subject of misery, instead of joy? Had Simon done it all wrong? Had he made her feel bad, even as he asked her to be his wife? Mal began to get angry. If Simon had done wrong by Kaylee, Mal was gonna… "He hurt you, 妹妹 mèimei?" he asked, in a still, quiet voice.
Kaylee stiffened, sensing the danger in Mal's quiet tones. "No," she said, pulling back and looking at his face. "No, nothin' like that. Don't go gettin' no ideas, 哥哥 gēgē."
"He asked you ta marry him?" Mal asked, and Kaylee nodded, silently, her expression unreadable. "Well, what 'm I s'posed ta think, 妹妹 mèimei, when a man asks you ta marry him, and what I see is all the sunshine gone outta your smile, and the brightest person on my ship walkin' 'round under a dark cloud? It ain't right."
"It's not Simon, 哥哥 gēgē. It's…her."
"Saffron."
"Yeah." He waited, and Kaylee finally continued. "She didn't come in here just to muck up the engine. She mucked me around, too."
Mal exhaled. "Surely you know better than to believe a thing she says, Kaylee. It ain't no fault of yours if she made ya feel bad. That evil woman mucked me around as well. Made me look like a fool, made me look like everything I'm not, and done it in front of Inara, too. She specializes in makin' people feel bad, ya know. It was part of her whole strategy here. Make all of us so upset with ourselves and each other, throw us off the scent, so we wouldn't see what else she was doin', the serious muckin' up of the ship—all what she done to it that we ain't even discovered yet."
"Some of what she said, 哥哥 gēgē—" Kaylee hesitated, "some of it's…true."
"That woman don't say nothin' that ain't aiming to mislead, manipulate or hurt folk," Mal countered. "What'd she say to you?"
"She said…she…" Kaylee risked a fearful glance at Mal. It pained him, to see his 妹妹 mèimei looking at him like that. "She knew."
"Knew what?"
Kaylee couldn't answer, just looked like to burst into tears.
"What?" he asked. "What's wrong, Kaylee?"
"She knew I'm pregnant," Kaylee whispered quickly, and cringed as if she expected him to explode.
It hurt Mal, to see Kaylee look so fearful—and fearful of him. Was he really such a 屁眼儿pìyǎnr? He'd accepted Zoe's pregnancy without undue fussing, hadn't he? Did Kaylee expect him to rant and storm and throw her off the boat? Way she was lookin' at him, she did. Of course, he already knew about Kaylee's pregnancy—Simon had said as much, weeks ago, when he told him the men's contraceptives were no good. He didn't imagine Simon kept secrets from Kaylee, so she had to know that he knew, too. True, she hadn't told him directly before this, and he hadn't mentioned the subject to her, but—why the fear? Must be she was afraid he'd throw them out on their ear, first opportunity.
哎呀 Āiyā, he was a 屁眼儿pìyǎnr, no doubt about it. He regretted all the times he'd groused and griped about shipboard relationships, how he'd put up obstacles every time Zoe and Wash had come close to deciding to have children, how he'd repeated over and over again that shipboard relationships complicated things—made it look like he was opposed to family and children and all. He was an idiot. Wash had once told him that his problem was that he projected his own intimacy issues onto everyone else. 天啊 Tiān ā, it was true. Because all that time he'd been working against the things that, deep down inside, he cherished most.
Time to be a 男儿nán'ér Reynolds, he told himself sternly, not a 屁眼儿pìyǎnr.
"So what's wrong with that?" he answered, looking Kaylee in the eye. "Prospect of a baby comin' is a cause for joy, not nothin' else."
"Don't it…complicate things?" Kaylee asked, uncertainly.
"Well, sure, I reckon it does," Mal answered. "But life's always complicated, ain't it? Rather have it complicated by a baby than…well, there's lots of less pleasant ways for things to get complicated, ain't there?"
"So you ain't…mad?"
"Mad? No, Kaylee, I ain't mad. Any baby of yours is bound to be the sunniest child in the 'Verse."
Kaylee smiled at him. Then a shadow crossed her face.
. . .
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glossary
闭嘴 Bìzuǐ [Shut up]
妹妹 mèimei [little sister]
哥哥 gēgē [older brother]
屁眼儿pìyǎnr [jerk, asshole]
哎呀 Āiyā [Damn]
天啊 Tiān ā [God]
男儿 nán'ér [real man]
A/N: Okay, kind of an abrupt ending here. However, this was too long to post in one chapter and this seemed like the only place to break the scene. More of Kaylee and Mal's talk coming right up in the next chapter. Your thoughts on Malware, Saffron, Kaylee's baby, or anything else related to this story, most welcome.