A/N: I want to take a moment to thank RionaEire and Oxnate for their friendly and consistent Reviews and PM's letting me know how it's going along and pointing out little errors. The time and attention is much appreciated.


Chapter Four – Trick

"This ain't gonna work." Jayne yelled for what seemed like the tenth time. Mal, in the confined space of the airlock could barely hear him over the crashing shudder of his ship caused by Wash doing flat-out-way-over-the-safety-limit run through the atmo. If this had been a terrestrial planet rather than a thin skinned moon, they would have probably burned up from overloaded heat shields. As it was, he and Jayne could hardly talk over the screaming noise as Serenity's structure cried out against the abuse of it.

Even so Mal yelled back at the Merc, "you didn't have any better ideas," emphasizing his point by cinching the ropes about Jayne's hips and legs hard.

The Merc yelled, "hey! Watch the jewels!"

Mal cinched again, yelling back, "since you have no faith in my plain, don't worry about it cause you won't need 'em!"

"Mal!" Wash's voice called in through his headset, "incoming at twenty miles. We need to do this NOW!"

Mal snapped the ropes holding Jayne into the lock tackle then snapped his own belt harness into the hard pads next to the ladder. His eyes met Jayne's as he called into his headset, "we're set Wash, on your mark!" The both of them then grabbed on to something really solid.

The Pilot's hands were white on both the control yoke and the vector throttles as he started to jerk and jink and spin and snap in what appeared to be a desperate effort to shake off a pursuer that couldn't be shaken. Wash's eyes were glued to his screens, his mouth open as he sucked in air for what might be his last breath. His head started to bob in conjunction with a mental countdown as the blip on the screen, racing after him, twisting around in reaction to his violent maneuvering. As his head continued to bob, his eyes watched that blip as it came across the screen to where it was just about join with the blip that was Serenity

"Hang on everyone!" Wash yelled as his hands jerked straight back on yoke and jammed the throttle quadrant forward—

Serenity reared up on its tail going 70 degrees nose high even as the VTOL engines spun about in full reverse thrust. It was like the ship hit a rock wall as its forward velocity jammed down toward zero while simultaneously the ship itself dropped like a stone that had hit a wall—

The interceptor screamed over her, missing the high nose by yards. The missile executed a preprogrammed maneuver, arching up sharply to loop up and over in an attempt to reacquire its target.

Which was still dropping like a dead bird. Wash's hands worked the VTOL controls and the maneuvering thrusters, the ship twisting 180 degrees about as it dropped, the nose coming down as Serenity reoriented. They had lost most of their forward momentum but not all of it. What was left Wash was using to fly backwards along the original direction of flight while the VTOLs screamed to stop the downward plunge. The missile reached the top of its loop having lost most of its speed in the maneuver trading, as all ballistic flight machines did, altitude for speed. It came over the top, its seeker looking for the shape of the Firefly—

Which was far, far down below it, flattening out with most of its forward momentum gone, a sitting duck—

A rock steady platform—

On its dorsal, the airlock hatch was wide open. Jayne Cobb was just settling himself out on the hull in front of it, using the open hatch as a bench rest point for his sniper rifle, its sight set to pick out of the dark night sky and lock onto the skin of the missile made red hot in the infrared by its hypersonic passage through the atmo.

Jayne knew that he would have only one shot. The sight compensated for any and all movement of the target as well as the ballistics of the explosive bullet but only he could select the moment when the trigger was pulled.

Mal was halfway out of the hatch as well, holding tight to Jayne's safety harness which was tied around the Merc's legs and hips leaving his upper torso free to work the rifle. Mal wanted to scream at Jayne to shoot but he knew that only one man could take the shot.

In the Cargo Bay, Zoe, Book, Inara and River were pulling themselves back to their feet and unhooking their own harnesses which had kept them from being thrown bodily around the hold from the escape and breaking maneuvers. They knew that at this moment that they were still alive but they had no idea how long that would last. Inara and Book, wearing heavy gloves started to yank attached electrical cables off of the pile of all the metal/ceramic/junk debris they had brought on board from the wreck along with anything else that had been handy within the ship that could be thrown into the pile. The whole thing was covered by a net and set in the middle of the Bay floor just back from the doors. Companion and Shepherd continued with their task as River helped Zoe connect the First Mates safety harness into a different set of tackle before they both started to free the tie downs that held the mule—

Kaylee, bruised and battered in the small space of the Engine Room was with deliberate haste working on her part of the plan. She wasn't sure if that plan was going to work but it wasn't because her part failed.

Wash watched his screens, slowly adding power/tilting the aspect of the VTOLs causing Serenity to slowly build up her backwards speed along her original flight path now that he had managed to arrest their downward fall. He did this even as every pore of his being screamed that he should firewall the throttles in an attempt to outmaneuver the missile that was now starting down—

Outside on the hull, the wind from the boat's velocity was rising, ripping at the two men clinging there. Mal was about out of patience, why wouldn't Jayne shoot—

Jayne watched the missile grow, he was waiting for—

The front of the missile in his scope glowed! Its laser seeker had the ship!

He took the shot.

The concussion rocked the ship. But it was the signal for—

Zoe, perched on the mule hit the throttle. It pushed forward and into the netted pile of metal/ceramic/garbage. Book, although thrown sideways by the shock wave managed to hold onto the control panel enabling him to hit the controls for the Cargo Doors.

The doors opened, the ramp lowered . . . as Zoe pushed the pile, which was blistering hot from all the electrical current which had been run through it out toward the sky. Behind her both River and Inara were holding onto her safety harness, River working frantically to get it into a fixed block on the deck, Inara trying not to think about whether River knew what she was doing because the Companion certainly did not and thought them all mad for believing that Mal's idea would really work.

Wash had the boat doing almost sixty in reverse, while at the same time he dropped the nose 15 degrees . . . 20 degrees . . . the 'downward' dip was to allow gravity to help with what his wife down in the Cargo Bay was trying to do. Zoe was almost all the way out onto the ramp, holding onto the mule for dear life as both slipstream and that same gravity threatened with increasing force to pull her toward infinity and death. The net with the hot debris hit the slip stream, lurching out, tethers holding the inside portion of the net forcing the rest of it to open up/billow out, all of its contents spilling out into the air which when combined with the boats reverse speed and altitude would cause those red hot contents to scatter and fall just like the wreckage from a hit.

Even as the VTOL engines started to belch huge amount of black smoke from the oil lines that Kaylee rerouted into the fuel lines.

Zoe tired to put the mule into reverse as the suction/gravity threatened to pull both her and the machine out after the debris. Its rubber tired shrieked in protest against the dual forces tearing at it. Zoe cried into her headset something that no one could hear. Even Book back by the door controls had to hang on against the pull.

In moments the nose came up and the speed braked. Zoe slammed the mule into reverse, Book hitting the door controls as she bounced across the threshold. "Clear!" Zoe shouted into her headset, relief on her face for she hadn't been sure if her husband could hear her over the noise.

Wash was already turning Serenity back around as Kaylee crossed the wires causing the VTOL engines to go 'Crazy Ivan", the whiplash effect tossing everyone about, the black smoke pouring from the VTOLs causing a huge blossom of black in the sky. As he fought the bucking beast, Wash glanced at a panel which showed that the dorsal hatch was still open. "Mal! Jayne! Get in, max accel coming on!"

Mal was only now getting Jayne back into the hatch. The concussion of the missile had flung the Merc off of the hull, only his harness saving him. Mal had tried to pull Jayne in but they had been hindered by the fact that the Merc would not drop his rifle. Despite Mal's curses, Jayne had only one hand to work with, cursing Mal back just as hard until—

The two of them almost fell down into the airlock but Mal was able to hit the hatch control. "We're in Wash! Go!"

As the two of them felt the acceleration come on, they glared at each other . . . until they both started to laugh.

Mal keyed his headset, "everyone alright?"


Mal was alone in the Dining Area, listlessly eating a meal by himself. He wasn't sure which part of it all made him more worried or angry. What he did know was that he had one unhappy crew and that he was one most unhappy Captain.

After their destruction of the missile, Wash had flown to and out over New Omaha's small sea to a point where he actually dipped the lower hull into the water. They had opened the Cargo Bay doors and had dumped all of the rest of the stuff that they had salvaged (or at least the stuff that could float) along with a couple of barrels of oil and fuel (which was both 'spread out' and ignited by the VTOL engines). The last thing to go into the water was a single crate from their 'other' cargo. At soon as it hit, Mal had been yelling into his comm causing Wash to take off for the far shore because they certainly didn't want to be over the spot moments later. Mal knew that his client wouldn't like the fact that he had used that clients thousand pounds of Central World's best black-market-from-Badger-himself mining explosives to create a big hole in the water of New Omaha's sea but in this case Mal was willing to take the loss in exchange for the visible expanding 'crash wave' that was spreading out from the 'crash site'.

Wash had then flown the hundred miles to the seas far shore and had found a shore side forest with trees high enough to conceal them from everything but direct overhead observation. They had gone dark and cold again holding their collective breath. No one relaxed until Wash's passive sensors had shown that the Predator had come and gone.

Wash had then flown low and slow up the west boarder of the sea until they were near the mining settlement at the north end. He then 'launched' up into normal flight paths and from there away from New Omaha. They had all taken in the fact that while they did this, they didn't see a single Fed ship or patrol, which only made their speculation about the woman in the pod even more pointed.

Despite the fact that they had gotten away with it, Mal made his feelings very clear that he had thought the whole episode entirely unnecessary considering to how outclassed they had been and how close they had come to losing everything. Jayne of course had come in on his side . . . which hadn't helped the rest of the crew's reactions one bit. Despite the success of it all, everyone was clearly angry at his attitude which made Serenity's Captain even more unhappy because it was their safety and welfare that he was trying to concentrate on and he repeated this repeatedly.

Not that it made any impression on any of them.

Nor did it keep any of them from reminding him . . . pointedly and repeatedly . . . that it had been his decision to hang around to get caught by the Fed ship anyway.

It was now a day out from New Omaha in route to New Canaan and their destination, its moon Lilac (which was on the opposite side of Qing Long system from Deadwood), following the legal shipping routes at the correct speeds to reach the planet where they could at last drop off their other 'cargo'. After that, Mal intended to the the gorram out of Qing Long and back to more hospitable parts of The Verse where they could find a job and keep flying.

Mal could sense that everyone . . . was at the moment avoiding him. He told himself that it didn't bother him. He knew that he his mood was rotten and he felt that since no one saw things his way that they would just have to live with him being rotten for a while.

A noise made him look up. Zoe was just coming into the Dining Area. He could tell as she came to an almost position of attention before him that she was . . . still ticked with him. That . . . bothered him more than anything . . . not that he wanted to admit it.

"Simon would like to see you in the Infirmary . . . sir," his First Mate told him coolly.

Mal looked back down to his plate, shaking his head in an annoyed way. "He can come up here if'n he wants to see me," was his reply.

"He's not going to leave his patient . . . sir," came Zoe's even cooler reply.

Only Mal's eyes looked up at Zoe. She could see the simmering anger in him starting to come to the surface again.

"You could have handed it better . . . sir," she told him in a flat voice.

"And all of you could have followed orders," was his slightly snappish reply.

Zoe looked . . . unmoved. In fact her features/tone didn't change one bit. She just told him, "I have to say that I agree with your estimation as to a very real possibility of what this woman is and the problems that she could bring us. But . . . would leaving her to die—"

"Don't say anything about how our refusing her help would just be like something the Alliance would do and how that was one reason why we fought against them," Mal said with some heat. "The first fact is that now that we have her . . . what do we do with her?" Mal's eyes flashed, his annoyance now turning to the anger he had been holding in. "The second is that we're usin resources for her in the Infirmary that we're gonna be hard pressed to replace cheaply. I'd rather have the medical supplies for our people than have them used up on a stranger."

"Would you say that," Zoe asked with a pointed look, "if she had been a kid? A little girl?"

Mal threw one hand away with his own frustration as he snapped, "she not! And even if she was a little girl, if we found her tied up in a disabled escape pod in a ship downed by an Alliance cruiser I'd still hesitate. What the hell is going on here Zoe? Neither one of us knows and now we have another total unknown on our hands. Kidnap? Ransom? Industrial Espionage? Old scores to settle? Someone who maybe needs an example made out of them? A double cross or maybe a triple cross on the part of so-in-so. We don't know and the last thing we need right now is to be in the middle of someone else's turf war, screw-up or 'political incident'. We've enough problems with Simon and River. When they came aboard, that had to be the worst couple of days we ever had. Almost cost Kaylee her life. We don't need more of that kind of thing happenin."

"So you would have killed her . . . right there . . . out of hand because you 'don't know'?" Zoe's voice was completely flat, both of them knowing very well just how many people Mal had emotionlessly 'killed out of hand' in their time together.

Mal looked at her for the longest moment, then turned away with a low, hard, "I . . . I thought about it . . . but . . . no—"

"And leaving her in the condition she was in?" Zoe prodded. "You'd of been more merciful if you'd shot her."

"She's not our responsibility," was his sullen reply.

"As the Shepherd said . . . sir . . . she became our responsibility the moment you saw the pod," was her quiet rejoinder. "We both know that. And just like the hand we were handed when we picked up Simon and River, we have to run with it and see how it plays out." Zoe cocked her head the other way and asked softly, "if we had lit out without her . . . how would you be feeling right now?"

"A lot safer," was his snorted reply. Mal could feel the glare from Zoe just increase in intensity. "And . . . " he had to admit after a moment, "I guess I'd be pretty miserable about myself as well." The funny thing was, that since he had admitted it to Zoe, meant that he also admitted it to himself. Because he hadn't realized that he had been trying so hard not to have that thought, the sudden revelation accounted for the sourness in his mouth and stomach. So much for denying denial he thought. What he did deny was that feeling deep in his gut . . . that feeling that had ultimately kept him from shooting the woman. The feeling that told him—

"I agree," Zoe told him softly breaking into his thoughts, "that if she lives . . . we're going to have to be very careful about how we deal with her. The fact that we . . . saved her life (said with a most pointed non-look at Mal) may help us more than we know right now. The thing is to do as we always try to do. Look and listen and not go jumping where we can't see to land."

"Fine," Mal muttered. "Let's hope that some good comes outta this because right now all I see is trouble. Whoever those pros who were lookin for her are, they've probably know or they're gonna know they've been had when they don't find our wreckage. That'll mean that they'll know that we got away and we got her. And they don't strike me as the type to give up for quite a piece. We may have bought ourselves a whole heap of trouble."

"We probably have," his First Mate agreed. "But let's hope not. Only time will tell. Right now . . . sir, Simon wants to see you. And I think that Kaylee and River could stand to see you a little less blood thirsty . . . sir."

"Yeah, right," was his reply to that.


"You wanted to see me?"

Simon looked over as Mal stepped into the Infirmary. Despite his own problems with what was happening, Mal still felt a stab of concern over the drawn, stressed features that made up the Doctors face—not that Mal intended to let anyone know that.

"Ah . . . yes I did," Simon managed looking back away because he could see just how much the Captain saw of everything that was wrong at the moment. Fortunately for him, once he walked in, the Captains eyes were on the form on the treatment table.

The convulsions had lessened considerably but they were still there. The woman's head, shoulders, limbs were all in motion with small, little constant jerks and quirks that had no pattern. It was rather unsettling to watch for any period of time but somehow the Captain couldn't take his eyes off of her.

"How's she doin?" Mal asked, his concern more for Simon than the woman even if he didn't let it show in tone or face.

"I . . . " Simon had to take a deep breath before going on, " . . . I honestly don't know."

Mal waved a hand at the twitching form. "Do you know what's happenin?"

Simon could only look at the woman with something akin to frustration. "I have neither seen nor heard of anything like this before. I've run what tests we're capable of on everything I can think of, even things that we haven't seen in centuries like epilepsy. I can't find a single thing to explain what happened."

"Exactly what did happen?" Mal asked.

"I don't know," Simon exclaimed looking like he wanted to throw up his hands in frustration. "We got her laid out. I gave her a dose of anesthesia and pain killer, did the setting of the compound fracture and did a quick scan of the rest of her bones; her pelvis is fractured by the way and the joints in her legs and ankles –" Simon had to stop and reorganize his thoughts as he was going off on a tangent—

"I . . . was kind of waiting," he said with an angry shake of his head. "As I said, I gave her the anesthesia and pain killer first thing because I didn't want her to suffer more than she already had of course but I also didn't want the pain of setting the bone and weaving the wound; that compound leg would is what she had the largest blood loss out of . . . " he hesitated again, clearly forcing himself to return to the main subject.

"I didn't want there to be a chance of the pain from setting the leg driving her to consciousness," Simon said . . . and it sounded as if he was trying to convince himself. "But . . . from the moment I gave her the first two doses . . . it was like her body immediately started to—"

Simon looked at Mal as if he was trying to make himself understand, "it was almost as if the drugs I put in her, simple, regular anesthesia and pain narcotic . . . you could see her skin; it started to . . . it was twitching like horses flicking off flies . . . and it was slowly getting worse."

Simon looked back down at the form before him. "I suddenly realized that it was like she was going into some kind of shock . . . not from the wounds or from being moved or even my setting the bone . . . but it was like she was having an allergic reaction to the doses I had given her . . . that the anesthesia and the pain killer was actually driving her reactions higher rather than calming them. In response to that, if it was an allergic reaction . . . I gave her a dose of broad spectrum allergy serum . . . and all hell broke loose."

Simon shook his head as if doubting his own summation, doubting it because, "something like that should be impossible. These meds have been in use for centuries, on every planet and moon, in every way and situation throughout The Verse." He looked at Mal allowing the Captain to see just how upset/confused/mystified he was. "But something happened. I don't have any idea what it was . . . but something very unusual happened and—" Simon looked back at the shaking woman in the bed, "whatever happened . . . I have to think that it happened because I gave her the meds." There was a catch in Simon's throat before he could say, "she's going through all this pain and suffering because I . . . tried to help her."

Mal gave him an uncompromising snort. "You're the one who said he had to help her," he told Simon with no feeling in his voice, ignoring the angry stare the Doctor instantly gave him."

"I didn't know," Simon snapped back, angry at himself that he had expected some sympathy and understanding from the Captain. "How could I know? I told you that I've never heard of anything like what has happened."

Mal snorted again. "Well, maybe the next time you find a hogtied woman in a disabled escape pod from a ship shot down by an Alliance cruiser you'll have second thoughts about jumpin in with both feet."

The glare he was getting just got hotter, making Mal all the angrier when he remembered glares from Zoe and Inara. "So what did you want to tell me?" he asked Simon in a condescending tone.

Simon's back was to him in a sign of rejection. The Doctor didn't even turn his head. "You have everything I thought you as the Captain should know. So . . . since none of it matters to you . . . I heartily apologize for wasting your valuable time by asking you down here. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to try to make sense of something that makes no sense."

Mal gave a third snort as he turned and headed out of the infirmary. "Fine, knock yourself out. But I expect an accountin of everything you use and it'll be up to you to figure out how to replace it all."

Mal felt an even fiercer glare on his back as the doors closed behind him.


The next day they reached the moon Lilac—

Mal, Jayne and Zoe loaded the last of the consignment into the lorry. Their client had been more sympathetic than Mal had expected. His sympathy had been based on the reports of a massive Alliance deployment out to the Blue Sun and multiple ships being stopped and boarded with many searched and seized in Qing Long space over the previous six weeks. So their client turned out to be most happy that any of his consignment had made it through in one piece. He did withhold a quarter of the payment owned Mal at Mal's request as compensation for his loss. Due to Mal's honesty, forthrightness and willingness to take the hit for the . . . unexpected use of the explosives, the client told them all that he would be happy to hire Serenity again in similar circumstances.

Mal had divvied out portions of the payment immediately to Wash (fuel and consumables), Kaylee (parts and equipment) and Book (food and stores) with instructions to make quick work of it. He wanted to be back off planet within hours.

That of course . . . did not sit well with a certain ambassador. Inara was much more that a little ticked with Serenity's Captain over the events of the prior days so she made a sudden, last minute appointment with a client on New Canaan's other moon, Ugarit and had gone off to keep it. When Mal had found out, he had not been happy. Inara's reaction to that was simply that she took off in her shuttle after growling in Mal's face that she would be back when she was DONE with her client and she would NOT be rushed.

As Mal could not afford to be without a shuttle, he had no choice but to hang around. But—


How long do you plan to keep this up?

The words spoke within Inara's head for the fourth time as the last of the atmo of Ugarit faded away in the viewport of her shuttle becoming the blackness of space. She had never known herself to be so torn . . . fragmented . . . unsure of herself.

Unwilling to be honest with herself as to the issues . . . the causes of her discontent.

And dreading . . . her return . . . 'home'.

For one thing, she had been away not one but two days. And while she kept saying to herself that she had cut as many corners as she could as far as her appointments were concerned, she knew that this too was not an honest statement. She knew that she had done it just to make someone angry—

Just maybe to . . . hurt someone—

Like she had been hurt—

Even though she refused to admit it to herself.

You don't want to leave

You know you can't stay

So much of it went against everything taught her in the phases of Companion Training dealing with interpersonal relationships outside of clients. She had told Kaylee that the Companion policy on 'dating' was complicated. Which meant that the Companion policy and outlook on—

She shoved that thought out of her mind.

Inara . . . honestly didn't know what to do. She knew the reason why she had told no one but Mal that she was leaving was first to see his reaction and second because she didn't want to leave and she had hoped that just maybe Mal might—

Her scanners started to flicker. She was getting close to Serenity's orbit. She shook her head in disgust. It was just like Mal to stick to his threat that the boat would be leaving the dirt of Lilac within hours after arrival. Which meant that he had been forced to bring Serenity over to Ugarit from Lilac, going into orbit, using consumables until she returned. That man could be so juvenile that—

Just as you were being juvenile taking this short range shuttle all the way over to Ugarit from Lilac! Even though both moons were fairly close together in their orbits of New Canaan, you had to do it as a ballistic flight with minimal life support in order to handle the distance. Was that any less juvenile that—

Inara firmly stepped on the emotions threatening to—

This . . . was the reason why she knew that she had to move on. It was best for her, it would most certainly be best for Mal—

But not just yet.

Inara had sensed . . . with that strong intuition of hers—

'Woman's intuition' was a sought after trait in a Companion. For those who possessed it, it was useful and necessary in realizing just what barriers might stand in the way of a complete joining of a Companion and a client, especially in the encounters with troubled or overly stressed clients that might experience . . . performance issues. It was also suppose to help Companions in recognizing and dealing with clients that might be under so much stress that they could be troublesome . . . or ones that might attach themselves too deeply to the Companion.

While it was not a talent sought in the screening of young Companion apprentices, if it was noticed, it was nurtured in the training houses as a part of the psychological education. Often times, for those who were found to possess it would be used, as part of that training, watching over other students who might be having trouble with some facet of their own training. Historically, some of the students had such a strong 'intuition' that their abilities bordered on precog.

While she had never tested high enough to be a precog, Inara had found that she possessed a particularly strong intuitive sense. For much of her life, it had simply been another tool to complete her work. But occasionally—it had been so strong that she had been unable to resist its pull—

. . . like the day it had 'pushed' her to respond to the ad placed advertising a tramp cargo hauler named Serenity which possessed a shuttle for rent.

. . . like how it was pushing Inara . . . telling her that she could not leave right now . . . that something was in the offing where she would be needed. She didn't want to say that it had anything to do with the mysterious woman that had been brought aboard—

. . . like . . . how she would have to admit that the hunch which has caused Serenity's Captain to hang around New Omaha was in fact justified—

One of the scary things that Inara had realized in the last couple of months was just how her own 'woman's intuition' was matched against Mal Reynolds formidable combination of intuition and pure luck. It made her wonder . . . if something more was at work when something forced her to respond to that ad for shuttle rental.

Even though this too was probably something that Inara wasn't be honest with herself about—

What else could it be?


Mal felt the 'bump' from Inara's returning shuttle. That bump turned into a cold guilty lump in his stomach. But at the same time . . . there was a relief . . . somewhere else inside him (he would not say or admit or even think about where it was within him) that was shrouded in its own kind of guilt.

Mal didn't want to feel any of these things . . . but he did . . . and right now he didn't know if it made him angry, sad or simply depressed. He did know that there would be a coldness to the Dining Area that night at dinner as well as more distance between him and the others on board. He didn't like it . . . but like so many things, he would act like he didn't care and wait for the others to move on around him.

There were times that Malcolm Reynolds did not like himself at all, which considering that most of the time he simply didn't like himself very much. He knew that he would never be what he once was. Most of the time he was able to hide the raw, ugly wounds of anger, betrayal and the loss of all hope and dreams—

The guilt—

Guilt that he had survived the war—

Guilt that he had survived Serenity Valley—

Guilt that he had survived his family—

Guilt that his night with Nandi had betrayed—

Mal cut the thoughts off . . . forcing himself cold and hard. He was Captain . . . these people were his responsibility . . . and they had the potential of real trouble in the offing. He squared his shoulders and prepared himself to show nothing but apathy and sarcasm when he encountered Inara—

Then he could feel guilty about that later on.

Right now . . . he went to tell Wash to get the gorram out of here.


Kaylee pondered the scribbled notes on her clipboard. She was starting to see more bleeding from the AE35 unit which would affect the clarity when they hooked into The Cortex . . . but at the same time it appeared as if there was an intermittent ground in the backup HAL unit. She only had enough cable to rewire one of them so she had to make a choice.

"Kaylee?"

The Engineer looked up in surprise. Inara was standing in the passageway hatch looking as if she thought she was trespassing into sacred territory. Kaylee who had been squatting on her heels jerked all the way upright with a surprised, "Inara."

The Companion looked a little uncomfortable when she said, "you didn't come to see me when I got back."

Kaylee felt her cheeks color . . . but she didn't stammer or try to make any excuses. "I . . . wasn't sure if I should . . . considerin the mood you were in when you left . . . and not knowin what your mood would be when you got back."

Inara looked at the younger woman questioningly. "Do you think that I would take a bad mood out on you?"

Kaylee's face blew open when she realized that she had maybe just damaged her relationship with the Companion, "Inara, no, I'm sorry," she managed to get out as she almost ran over to the Companion. "I didn't mean it that way, I just thought—"

Inara gave the distraught Engineer a smile and laid a hand on Kaylee's outthrust arm. "It's okay; I know that you didn't mean anything bad by that."

"I just thought," Kaylee said softly, "that maybe you wanted some peace and quiet."

Inara kept the smile on her face but there was a hard edge to her tone when she said, "you mean that you thought that I might not want to see a certain bombastic ass who is too full of himself."

Kaylee just pursed her lips together saying nothing. She knew that the tone in Inara's voice was directed toward that 'bombastic ass' and not toward her. At the same time however, Kaylee had tried to support Inara in her stubborn relationship with Mal just as Inara had tried to support her in her attempts to have a relationship with Simon. The fact that it seemed that neither one of them were able to get anywhere—

Although Kaylee knew that there was a difference in the dynamics. She had made no secret of her interest in Simon and she knew that Simon was interested in her; he was just a total klutz in trying to get himself to do something about it without tripping over both of his feet.

Mal and Inara on the other hand . . . neither one of them seemed to want to admit that they had a relationship . . . or at least a potential one . . . and although Kaylee had never said it, she thought the both of them were idiots for denying something that should be obvious to both the Captain and the Companion.

But Kaylee wouldn't voice her feelings due to her fear of damaging her relationship with Inara. So she just shrugged and said, "well, I keep bein told that men are nothin between their ears, too much tween their legs an all their brain's in their behinds so there's no accountin."

The edge left Inara's smile allowing her to ask, "so . . . will you come see what I brought?"

Kaylee's smile gave Inara her answer.


A/N: Just about done with the rewrite and editing for Book One. Once it is done I'll probably start to publish every other week as I can't see stretching it out over a year which publishing every third week would do.

I hope everyone reading is enjoying. Any reviews or comments are welcome. I will always reply although sometimes it's several days before I can get to them.

Until then

I Will Remain

Your Humble and Devoted Servant

The Wise Duck