Ch. 17

Daddy, can you hear the devil drawing near?
Like a bullet from a gun, run daddy run.
Saw that dark cloud coming from a million miles away.
Oh, how I've dreaded this God forsaken day.

"Run Daddy Run", Miranda Lambert and the Pistol Annies

A man stood amidst the dust and crush of people and cursed with mind and lips. He cursed the sky for mocking him with its brightness, a badger for its smug superiority; everyone and everything that had come between him and what was his. Thoughts rolled from his mind tohis mouth in a mix of Mandarin and English, inspiring a certain sort of awe in his companions and the occasional admiring look from a passerby. He was not being overly loud, but he spoke from the heart, and that is a thing people almost always take notice of.

Someone had taken their Albatross. Their girl. They'd snuck onto the ship and managed to put in place such an ambush as he would have wished to set on the Alliance. They'd shot her down in front of him; had taken her, and there hadn't been a thing he could do if he wanted the rest of his crew, his family, to live. The hunters had made a very big mistake, though, in not killing them all. Because as soon as they'd gotten all the explosives found and the engine patched up, the crew of Serenity had put on their war faces and gone hunting.

And found nothing.

Three months. Three months with nary a whisper, a glimpse; either of their girl or the crew that had taken her. The strain on his crew showed. Tempers ran high. Kaylee had started chucking bits of engine parts at all and sundry. She'd kicked Simon out of their bunk more than once. Jayne's rough edges had never really gone away, but he'd gotten more than a mite tetchy lately. The arrival of that guo cao de guitar only made things worse as far as Mal was concerned. He heartily wished it had never come aboard. Every spare minute the man had, he was playing the thing. The sound of it was near to driving Mal to crawl out a hatch without a suit. He kept looking for the dancing figure that should always accompany the sound of music, and on not finding her, had to step firmly on the need to go shoot the damned guitar to pieces.

And then, finally, there'd been news out of Red Sun. Monty had tossed him the first real bit of hope they'd gotten since they lost her. Saddler and his crew were dead, in all manner of blood and violence. Blood and violence that Mal knew their girl just didn't have the body mass to accomplish. Was it that big tama de hundan that Monty had seen pick her up in the street? Was she with the man, or was he chasing her?

His old friend had been less than clear on the details of what happened on the skyplex, and understandably so. Something about mercs, and gun waving, and coming around the corner of a docking bay to see a huge man with goggles aiming a gun at him between the two halves of a closing airlock hatch.

Mal'd turned Serenity around then. As much as it pained him to say it, Badger was right. Flying into Red Sun and its skyplex in particular would be like walking into a hornet's nest of Alliance and bounty hunters, all looking for the girl and the man who'd left two dead in the docking bays. What mattered was that she'd been sighted. She was still alive somewhere. That was enough for them to keep flying. Keep hunting. To do that, they needed this job. Gorramit all to hell. They needed this job and the payday it brought. By now he was past caring who wanted something shipped out to Blue Sun so bad they'd pay a hundred thousand plat.

What he did care about was the smug grin on Badger's face as he'd told them where to meet their contact. Something had crawled down Mal's spine and taken up residence in his gut at that look. The half-hidden smiles on the faces of the weasel's men hadn't helped. But his people needed the job. They'd been neglecting work in favor of hunting; it started to show in the lean faces of the crew and a certain grinding in the engine that Kaylee claimed would blow them all to kingdom come soon if she didn't get time planetside to fix it properly.

"Sir."

Mal turned to look at his first mate and was unsurprised to see her frowning. "Sir, something ain't right about this."

On his other side, Jayne snorted. "Ain't anything right about this. That puddle of xiongmao niao got something up his sleeve. Bet my whole cut on it."

Mal groaned and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "Tell me something new, Jayne. Better yet," he glared at the gun hand, "tell me how we're supposed to follow the only lead we got with no fuel and no money to buy any!"

"Hell, Mal," Jayne threw up his hands in frustration. "What lead? Monty thinks he saw her. Well, that's just shuài! But that was nigh on five days ago. Where'd she go?"

"Info says ship that big guy stuck her on was headed for Blue Sun," Zoe put in as they started walking again.

"Which is why we're taking a job that heads us out that way," Mal said in his best Captainy voice. "See if we can't sniff them out while we're there."

"Sure," Jayne grumbled, dodging around a pile of children playing hopscotch. "Poke around Blue Sun. Mal, you know well as I do that just 'cause they were pointed out that way don't mean they stayed pointed that way."

"It's a fact I'm aware of, Jayne." Mal couldn't blame the man. He knew the truth too, and trackin' things was his job. "But it's a direction, and it's a damn sight more 'n we've had."

Jayne snarled as a dog ran out into the street in front of him, trailing a string of some sort of unidentifiable meat behind it. He was still muttering as he caught up with them, but Mal caught the end of his words "-why she ain't waved if she's free anyhow."

Zoe rolled her eyes. Mal shook his head. "Then if she ain't free, we get her free. Bring her home, where she belongs," he snapped, snatching at a pickpocket's outstretched hand as he went by. A swift rap on the head and the retrieval of Zoe's slim pouch of coin, and they were off again.

"Sir, what if she don't want to come home?"

That brought him up so short he nearly tripped over his own feet. Jayne plowed into the back of him and down they went in a tangle of limbs, gun belts, and flapping coats. Cursing and muttering, the two sorted themselves out. Zoe helped first one, then the other to their feet. "Shensheng de gaowan!" Mal nearly shouted. Several heads turned in the crowd to look at him. He waited, panting and trying to dust himself off, mildly grateful his fall hadn't been two inches to the left into the pile of horse shithe'd nearly landed in. "Run that by me again," he demanded as he settled his gun back on his hip.

Zoe hadn't blinked. "Just say'n, sir. She's a Reader. We all been so worried about her, worried about how we'll find her. Simon's been checking all those vials of drugs he's got, and you know he's thinking we'll find her broken again." She set her hands behind her back and stood still as a statue, "We've all thought it sir, how to handle her if she's all kuangzhe de again."

That brought him up short. "Bì zuî," he breathed, as comprehension dawned.

"Aw hell, Mal." Jayne scratched at his head and frowned. "She ran before when we wouldn't listen. Zo's got a point. She can read us now, why'd she want to come back?"

That earned the gun hand an appraising look from Captain and first mate both before they started walking again. Mal turned the idea over in his head. Truth to tell he couldn't see any holes in the logic. She'd taken drastic measures before. Maybe she really had gotten free of the mercs and was afraid to come home. His heart tightened a bit at that, even though his brain told him it was practical to prepare for finding her back in the state she'd been when she'd first come aboard: Muttering in corners, throwing things at random, cursing and slashing at people with knives. She'd come far, very far since then. To even think of her regressing… He shoved the thought from his mind and came to a decision as they reached the ship. "We'll deal with it as it comes. First, we need to find her. Then, so long as we can keep the Doc from pumping her full a' who knows what, we'll see if she wants to stay."

Jayne snorted, but didn't complain, bending to scoop Sierra up as she ran giggling out of the common room, then handing her to Zoe. Something around his first mate's eyes had loosened, but she opened her mouth and Mal knew he was going to hate what she was about to say. "And the big guy, sir?"

"Just have to see," he muttered. "He gets in our way though, you bring him down, dong ma?"

Zoe nodded. "Yes sir."

"Good. Meet's in a couple hours." He turned to look at the sun setting over the docks and shook his head. "We'll get this deal, get our cargo, and get fly'n."

~HHYFN~

It was a fact of life, almost a law of nature. Anyone having dealings with those on the wrong side of the law was pretty much guaranteed to end up in a bar at some point. Between people too drunk to remember their own names, the cover of buying alcohol for one's own self, and the general crush of bodies; it was relatively easy get in and get out.

Riddick had spent a significant portion of his life on the bad side of the law, not all of it running. He still had to eat. So, cultural differences aside, he was pretty familiar with the insides of bars. This one was remarkable only in the stench. Even the rotten egg smell of Saddler's cubby on the skyplex had nothing on this place. He figured it must have something to do with the people trying to dance while still carrying their drinks, along with the assorted piles of animal shit he'd had to pick through to get to the door. Not for the first time, he wondered if River chose places like this on purpose, just to cripple his nose.

The girl in question ignored the thought when he shoved it at her. She was sitting up to the bar he was leaning against, toying with a shot glass full of something clear. She nearly vibrated with the force of her emotions. He could feel them teasing the edges of his mind. His animal had been snarling at them most of the day. He'd lost her scent fast in the stench of the bar, but kept his arm in contact with hers so he could feel her heart rate. It was erratic, as it had been all afternoon. First calm, then racing as some new worry occurred to her, and then calm again as he bled the worry off of her. He did his best to shove it the excess down the hole he'd kept his animal in before he met her. It wasn't working very well. If her Captain didn't show soon, she wasn't going to be the only one a pile of nerves. And that would be bad, because losing control of his emotions tended to end in bloodshed. There were a lot of people between him and the door.

His animal snarled again as River shifted next to him. The man did his best to calm it, while Riddick himself grunted and took the shot glass from her to down it. ::Don't need it,:: he muttered to her as the cheap liquid burned a path down his throat. ::You're on edge enough as it is.::

She frowned at him and called for another. ::Need the camouflage.::

It was hard to argue with that logic. He glared anyway, more irritated with the situation than with her. She was worried, afraid of what was going to happen, and he couldn't expect anything else when it got right down to it. He'd never been in her position, waiting for people he cared about to reject or accept him, but he couldn't blame her for it. He just wished he could be more help.

::Have been,:: she whispered in his head. ::Have put aside the big bad Riddick all day to be the one made of soft caramel.:: The calm left her voice to be replaced by something he couldn't identify. ::I am grateful, but still wish I could be myself and not this walking pile of nerves.::

Riddick snorted and traced a finger up her arm. Her heart was racing again, her breath just a little faster than usual as she tried to look normal and failed. She was right about one thing. It'd been a hell of a day keeping her calm. But from the minute they stepped out of Badger's hole and back into the sunlight, she'd been jittery.

Fuck, if he'd known that's what the waiting would do to her, he'd have figured out a way to stay at Badger's, or at least not pushed so hard to leave quickly. It stank, and Badger himself was beyond smug. He'd had to sit there, watching the man's goons drift over every so often to place small pouches of coin on the big metal desk. Some even passed the pouches among themselves. He'd growled just a little louder each time.

River had laughed in his head as she explained. The bet was twofold; no matter that it was years since it'd been made. That she'd found a man while away from the ship had apparently had just as long odds as whether or not she'd have the guts to bring him home to her family. Seemed Badger knew her better than his men had thought, because he raked in a shit ton of cash. It made him want to snap the man's neck, but River liked him and he seemed to like her ok. For that, Riddick could put up with badly hidden smirks and the knowing looks the guards gave each other.

She started wobbling as they made their way through the markets afterward. Riddick was starting to know the feeling of how she buried herself in his mind for calm. She'd climbed up into the tree and latched onto the animal so tight she almost merged with it. He wondered why it she never went to the man, the thinking and planning half of himself that added its logic to the animal's instinct. She'd shrugged and muttered something so full of technical jargon that he'd given up on an answer. It worked. That was all he needed to know.

And it had worked, at least for a while. Out past the docks and into the more established shops and stalls that lined the road. She'd found her fruit, stopped at a moneylender of some sort and come out with a different pouch of coin than the one she'd entered with; then dragged him away before he could ask how she'd gotten it. A few more stalls, one full of used clothing, which she picked over and frowned at before finally holding it up to his chest and he realized she was looking for something for him.

He grumbled, the teenage girl running the stall laughed fit to burst, and River poked and prodded at him till he accepted the inevitable. They'd left with a new set of cargos for him, along with a couple of new shirts, and they certainly fit better than what he was wearing.

He'd had only a few minutes of relief at his easy escape before River grabbed him by the shoulder, putting her whole weight into stopping him. They were outside an actual shop, one where women wearing fancy dresses posed in the window. For one moment, he was afraid the nerves had finally broken her. That got him a laugh, a nervous one, but a laugh. nonetheless. She'd maneuvered him into a spot near the door before he'd gotten a chance to argue.

"Stay" She'd grinned up at him, eyes too bright and smile too forced. "Need to replace things you keep ripping up."

His animal laughed at him while the man calculated all the ways for this could go wrong. But he took another look at the fluffy white concoction bobbing in the window and nodded. She could take care of herself. He would hear her if things got fucked up, through their bond, if nothing else. She patted his arm, pecked him on the cheek, and trotted into the store.

After that, she lasted all the way back to the ship, her mind tense but not overly so, still able to laugh and snap back when the man poked at her and the animal nudged at her with its head. But when she came out of their bunk and into the cargo bay, it was like she'd flipped a switch. She paced and muttered, reeking of lemons one second, steel and fire the next. Her fingers twitched. Riddick could feel the calculations run from her mind to his and back out again. She came to him where he stood, having just dropped the deck plate back over the pit where they'd hidden Kyra, taken one look over his shoulder at the infirmary, and was abruptly gone. Halfway across the bay and up the crates before he even registered the movement. One part of him was duly impressed. The other thought she should be climbing a tree in his mind, not crates in the real world.

She stayed up there, wearing a path along the top three boxes in the stack. She didn't even notice when he'd started the climb them, slowly, carefully. Not worried that he'd tip anything over, but that she'd notice and take flight, to run who knew where. Or fight him. He pushed calm at her with every movement, offering her sanctuary in his head, but she didn't notice. Steel rose in the air, ramming its way up his nose, freshly sharpened blades that cut and burned, but she didn't give off any other signals that usually meant he was about to collect a new set of bruises. He could smell the lemons too, but somehow it was the witch-hazel of her insanity that had spooked him the most.

He gained the top of the stack and she still ignored him, even when she'd walked right into him. Pinning her in his arms, he knocked her feet out from under her, turned and dropped them both into a seated position on the crates. She only gave a token struggle. Soon enough, he had his ankles locked over hers and both of her hands pinioned in his. He didn't know how long they sat there, her panting, twitching, and jerking, him trying to reach her with both mind and voice. Eventually apples and rain crept back into her scent as she wore herself out. He waited a few more minutes before releasing her hands and running his fingers up her sides. And that's when he got the biggest surprise of the day.

"River," he asked carefully. "What are you wearing?"

The fabric of her shirt was the same as always, but under it he could feel a hard seam and something that didn't have as much flexibility as clothes usually did.

She giggled, an almost normal sound that gave him some hope for the rest of the day not going to shit, then lifted the hem of her shirt to show him. Fabric of a middle shade, thick and heavy, encased her like a second skin. A thorough going over of her torso revealed that it covered her from collarbone to hips and down her arms as well. He gave her a look. She laughed and leaned back. "Not the promised corset. May still get that."

He growled. She patted his knee. "Body armor."

Just like that, things were serious again. He stiffened, prodding at the public areas of her mind as he turned her to look him full in the face. "Body armor." It wasn't a question. And it was.

She nodded. Peat leavened with witch-hazel rose in the air. "Came to tell you. Came to get you. But," she shuddered. "Something wrong in the air. Not watchers, not hunters. Unsure." She laced her fingers with his. "Calculations have too many variables. Got armor to stack odds. Can't not go out, maybe is only the crew making her nervous." Huge dark eyes met his as charcoal joined the witch-hazel. "He is right. Need to muddy the trail. Turning from Blue Sun helped, but so long as we have Kyra, will need to make a course for Haven, eventually." Her fingers twitched and jerked. He recaptured her ankles to keep her feet from doing the same. She didn't seem to need an answer; it was as if the words spilled from an overflowing well. Her presence in his head felt more like a small earthquake at the edges of consciousness than its usual firm pressure.

So, he held her, doing his best to draw her nerves into himself, although he still didn't know how or why it should work; and waited for the spell to pass. She was right. They still needed to do this. But he was fucking tired of running. The urge to find the people who'd put this newest bounty on her head and rip them limb from limb got stronger every minute. At some point, he wasn't sure when she went still. A check of her breathing and heart rate told him she'd worried herself to sleep.

He took her back to their bunk and laid her in the nest on the floor, the bed having been covered in her purchases. He fingered the new bits of lace a moment before moving on to the armored shirt, sleeveless in this case, that she'd set alongside the new cargos. He shook his head. Domesticated, that's what he was. Soft over a girl who could, when she was in the mood and had the jump on him, probably gut and skin him out before he knew what was happening. At least there'd was always a chance at violence with her around. He might need to go kill some deserving motherfucker in high command again if life ever got boring.

A hand slid up his arm, warm and wrong, yanking him back to the present. Cheap perfume, more alcohol based than any scent he could name, drifted up and made him flare his nose in distaste. He glared down at the frazzle haired blond that'd sidled up next to him. The effect was, as always, blunted some by the goggles. To top it off, she was either too drunk to be warned off or too fascinated to be smart.

He growled at her for good measure before turning to check on River, whose presence in his mind was still jittery, but laced with steel. He could almost visualize her there at the base of the tree, but the figure was that of the girl made of blades, not the waif that usually crawled up into the branches with the animal. Oblivious to his attention, River stared at a vid screen behind the bar, shot glass in her hand forgotten as she mouthed the words of the dancing children trying to sell… something.

"Hey." Riddick touched her arm. "You in there?"

"Aww, ya can see she's ignor'n ya." The blond again. Riddick snarled as her fingers started to drift down his chest. "Now me, ah' won't be ignor'n ya at all. Pay ya all sorts of attention."

A slim hand reached past him to wrap around the woman's wrist. Riddick snapped his head around, but River was still ignoring him. Instead, she stayed fixated on the other woman. Hopping off her stool to get a better grip, she tilted her head to stare at the stranger.

"Not hers to touch," River whispered.

The sound sent a chill down the back of Riddick's neck. He knew this voice. It was the one she'd used right before the Reaver fight, when she warned him not to push her in the aftermath. The one she'd used to shriek at him when he ignored that warning. This time, though, it was laced with something else, something cold and beyond inhuman. Riddick pushed at her with his mind and found a wall where her consciousness should be. A wall made of blades that he couldn't climb or bull his way through.

The blond struggled, trying to get free of River. But the girl'd dug her heels in and wouldn't let go. If it hadn't been for the state of her mind, Riddick would have been amused by the possessiveness. As it was, he could only try to break her hold on the strange woman, one finger at a time. He did his best to stretch himself towards her mind as he worked, looking for a way past that fluid wall of sharp edges. "Ya want to let go? Think she gets the picture."

"Oh, ah' get it," The blond tried to jerk her hand free. "She's yours, you're hers, got the picture. Can ah' go now? Didn't mean no harm!" Her voice cracked on the last word, and Riddick worked a little faster to unwrap River's fingers from her wrist.

"Blunt the knives, dull the blade," River leaned forward, hissing in the woman's face like an angry cat. "Follow the river but don't you wade."

Witch-hazel, steel, and fire poured off her as knives sliced the edges of Riddick's consciousness.

"Turn the mill to grind the bones; river, river go flowing home."

Riddick pried the last finger free. The tinny sound of the commercial on the vid screen behind him echoed oddly in his ears. He realized it was coming to him from River the way she heard it. Something in his bones hummed, an ocean of metal closed over his head. His animal woke in a snarling rage.

He didn't have time to deal with it. Rooting himself as firmly in the present as he could, Riddick reached for the stench of the broom, the feel of the chair at his back. Anything but what was pouring from River's head into his.

He heard her shriek "She touched that which is not hers to own!" and felt her body fly past his. A glimpse of blond hair as the strange woman's head snapped back, and then the world went red. He managed one last thing before he lost himself.

The animal forced the words out his throat in a roar. "River!"

~HHYFN~

Mal's mood had, in fact, gotten worse as the day went on. Between Jayne's bitching about the job, Kaylee's griping about the need for repairs, Simon's worry for his sister, and the hundred and one other things that needed to be done before they could get their cargo and get the hell off this planet, he was ready to start shooting. Something. Anything.

Luckily Zoe dragged him out of the ship before he either cold-cocked Simon or told Sierra she was never allowed to set foot on real ground again. That little girl had an unnatural love of planetside, if he did say so himself. And she seemed convinced that if they'd just let her out to go look for her River, the Reader would show up lickety-split. Poor kid'd been taking the brunt of things the past few months. They'd nearly lost her once on Summerhome when she took it into her head that River just had to be there and gone trucking out of the cargo bay and into the forest nearby with nary a one of them noticing.

She was with Kaylee for now, who'd distracted her with a game that involved a pile of sticks and not much else. He wasn't gonna ask. So long as they kept her on the ship, he didn't really care what they did to keep his goddaughter from noticing that her mother was gone.

"You've got the face again, sir."

Mal gave his first mate a blank look. He knew what she meant, but it was fun to prod at her. Unfortunately, she knew this game, and matched him stare for stare. Behind them, Jayne hopped out of the mule and gave the bar in front of them a once over. It didn't smell any worse from outside than most bars did. Piss, vomit, dust and sour alcohol mixed with the smell of frying meat, peppers, and hot cooking oil. Loud music vibrated through the thin walls. People in all stages of drunkenness milled around the entrance. Out for fresher air, out to empty the contents of their stomachs, out to take care of business that really should have gone on behind closed doors, some even on their way in.

Mal wrinkled his nose. "Zoe."

"Sir?" Zoe held out a stiff arm to keep a particularly greasy specimen of the male gender from getting any closer.

"I say we do this real fast."

Jayne snorted, shouldered a couple half out of their clothes off to one side, and leveled his gun at the man when he tried to protest. Zoe shook her head, stepped over a drunk on the ground, and set her heel to the hand that had reached for her ankle. "Can't say I disagree, sir."

Ironically, the crush of people eased once they made it inside. Apparently, all those too drunk to pay for more booze got kicked out to make way for people who could. A vid screen by the door blared a commercial for something. The tinny voices of the children on the screen made Mal wince as he walked by. The music paused as the audio system switched songs. He was just rounding the corner of the entryway into the main area of the bar when they heard a crash, several voices screamed, and someone roared "River!"

The three froze, looked at each other, then clawed their way over the last few people between them and the main room. It was hard to tell what was happening at first. Women were running, men were standing up to see who'd caused the ruckus, and there was a knot of people by the bar that couldn't seem to decide which way to go.

Then the center of the pile flew outward, propelled by the fists and feet of a slight young woman with dark hair and a blank face.

Mal cursed.

Jayne groaned. "Not again."

The Captain managed to drag his eyes away from their Reader, once again gone haywire in a room full of drunks, so he could meet the resigned eyes of his hired gun. "You remember them words?"

Zoe answered for all of them. "Nope. Been too long. And Simon ain't got around to teaching us yet."

"Just ruttin' great," Jayne muttered, and turned back to the fight. Something in the dynamic of it had changed. One of the men on the floor had picked himself up and launched himself, roaring, at their girl. He wasn't overly tall, but he was muscled along the lines of a brick wall and gave as good as he got.

River couldn't keep him down, even after she'd knocked over every other attacker. The man was took his fair share as well, using the moments between catching River by the ankle and throwing her over the bar to kick one opponent in the gut and lay the next out with a solid punch to the temple. Mal saw blood on that one and figured the guy for dead before he hit the floor.

Then River came flying back over the bar, feet aimed at the stranger's head and her legs wrap around his neck as momentum carried her onwards. Mal winced. Next to him, Zoe stiffened. But the man moved with her, rolling and twisting so that River landed flat on her back. He stilled for a moment, and although it was hard to tell with the welder's goggles in the way, it almost seemed like something cleared in expression.

His hesitation cost him, though. River bounced up to fling a punch at his diaphragm. He caught the fist, twisted her arm out of the way, and grabbed her by the throat with his other hand. "River," he yelled in her face. Then he dodged another swing, dropping to kick her legs out from under her. She went down, rolled backwards, and popped right back up, spinning to catch one of the other patrons a kick in the face before refocusing her attention on the big stranger.

The three crew members of Serenity stared at each other. Mal felt his jaw open and close a couple times before he managed to force any words out. "You don't think-" He didn't know what he thought. Or didn't think. What he knew was that his Reader was alive and seemed to be trying to kill someone who was a good enough fighter that she couldn't take him down in one hit and move on. That was all sorts of ominous in his book. Problem was, he couldn't come up with a way to stop her from taking out the rest of the bar before the big man finally got a firm grip on her and snapped that skinny little neck with his huge hands.

"Jayne," Mal said, as he reached for his gun.

The other man grumbled, but peeled out of his jacket and handed it over to Zoe, along with his big Bowie knife, gun, and the other assorted bits of weaponry hidden on his person. "I git kilt," he said. "'S on your head Mal."

Zoe snorted and turned to dump the merc's gear to one side.

The barkeep stood from his hiding place at one end of the long counter and raised a sawed-off shotgun to his shoulder. The noise of it boomed through the air, but neither the girl nor the stranger were anywhere in the line of fire. The stranger grabbed the tub of lard trying to get a choke hold on him, and tossed him in the way of the shot. River leaped up on the near end of the bar, landed on all fours, and ran for the barkeep.

He realized what was coming about the time the gut shot victim of the blast dropped to the floor. The strange man with the goggles got to River before she got to the barkeep, grabbed her around the waist, and heaved. She went flying, skidded across the table standing, and tumbled off the other side to land in a crouch.

"Jayne, best make your move," Mal muttered out of the corner of his mouth as he started to sidle around the wall and towards the bar. "Zo, you stay here. Just in case."

She nodded, mouth set in an unhappy line, but it was an order and she would obey. She pulled her Mare's Leg as the two men moved off. In the main bar, River lurched forward, almost on all fours, bracing her hands on the floor to kick up at the man with both feet. He crossed his wrists in front of him to catch the blow and sweep it aside. She rolled under the grab that followed, rising behind him with one of the abandoned guns in her hand.

That's when Jayne hit her, grappling the weapon around behind her back, twisting to make her let go. She swung her free elbow up, catching him in the temple. The tall merc grunted in pain, reaching for that hand as well.

Then the stranger was there, roaring something along the lines of "Not yours!"

River kicked out, using Jayne's body as her brace to land a foot each in the stranger's throat and face. He went dropped, snarling, then lunged back up inside her reach. Jayne kept yelling in River's ear, but she didn't seem to hear him. Instead, she twisted her gun hand free and fired. The bullet went wide, scoring a line in the stranger's shirt before burying itself in the wall.

But she'd brought the hand up in a swing, as if she knew he'd dodge. The butt end of her gun struck him in the temple just as his fist met her face.

Silence, broken only by the cries and moans of the injured. Mal stared at the surrounding bodies, some moaning, some bleeding, some not moving at all. Jayne crawled out from under River and the stranger. Both of them were out. Mal was almost afraid to check for a pulse on either. Over by the door Zoe lowered her Mare's Leg, one ear cocked to the outside. Mal stilled. Sirens. Faint, but coming closer. He gave Jayne a hand up before leaning down to pull River out from under the big man. "Get him too," he said, toeing the stranger. "I want answers."

Muttering about heavy lifting, hundan that had to stick their noses where they didn't belong, and the 'Verse in general; Jayne pulled the stranger into an awkward fireman's carry and headed for the door. Zoe grabbed Jayne's gear in one hand, and covering the outer perimeter with her mare's leg, checked the outside. "Clear," she called softly, before propping open the door so the men could make it through. Two minutes later, they'd wrestled their Reader and the stranger into the back of the mule. Another thirty seconds and they were gone, just before the authorities dropped out of the sky.

Author's Note: And that wraps up part one! I have some life stuff to tidy away before I can start posting the next part, but I promise it's coming! Huge thank you to everyone who reads, follows, favs, and most of all REVIEWS this story. I love you all. Love seeing the view count climb and getting notices about new comments. Makes my day so much happier!

Did it go as expected? This was actually the hardest chapter to write so far. I had it planned. I knew exactly what was going to happen. But the set up was a pain, 'cause I kept having to remind myself that the characters themselves weren't looking for this ending. They were looking for something entirely different.

As always, I don't own any of it. Wish I did. But I don't

Translations:
guo cao de- Dog humping

tama de hundan- Mother-humping son of a bitch

xiongmao niao- panda urine

shuài- handsome

Shensheng de gaowan- Holy testicle Tuesday

kuangzhe de- crazy/nuts

Bì zuî- Be quiet/shut up

Dong ma- understand

hundan- bastard