Chapter 2: Can't Take Him Anywhere
- Present Day -
"Miranda!" The drunken voice sneered, rising above the general hubbub of the saloon. "You actually believed that go se?"
Mal, lounging at the bar, straightened slowly. He lifted his glass to his mouth and swigged the rest of his scotch while he had the chance, giving a surreptitious look over his shoulder at the same time.
They'd come in for a drink after delivering and getting payment for a little smuggling job, and they were just waiting for River to get back with the mule, which had sprung a leak of some essential fluid on the way into town. Mal had decided to send the mule back to Serenity for a little Kaylee attention while he and Jayne saw to business in a nearby warehouse. Mal was currently sporting a flat cloth panel lined with heavy cash money strapped against his lower back, concealed by his long brown duster. Their payout had been more than decent, and no gun shots had been exchanged, for once. Feeling complacent, when Mal had radioed River and she'd estimated her time of arrival would be forty-one minutes, he'd told her to take her time. He and Jayne had moseyed down the street until they'd found this tavern, drawn by the Alliance flag and the garish bunting draped across the second level balcony in recognition of Unification Day.
Now that Simon and River no longer had a bounty over their heads, Serenity and crew were able to venture a little closer to the core planets, where jobs were more lucrative… and where unification had been more widely supported. Mal'd been expecting some kind of comment like that for the last half hour, but the celebratory atmosphere had definitely been subdued this year. Mal had started to think that they were going to get through this Unification Day with a disappointing lack of brawling. Hmm. Looked like he might have been a mite pessimistic in that regard. That was the wonderful thing about wanting to start a fight in a bar: pretty much, all you had to do was sit back and let alcohol do the work for you.
He glanced across to the pool table, where Jayne was squinting at the drunk through the thick haze of cigar smoke that circled around his head, courtesy of the noisome stogie clenched between his teeth. He had a pool cue in his hand and he was chalking the tip very methodically, waiting.
"What do you mean, go se?" One of the other patrons of this fine establishment slurred back. "Alliance is the ones who made 'em. You know, them. They killed off all them people to make 'em. Who knows what gorram else they're doing? What other monsters they're creatin?" There were scattered murmurs of agreement.
That muttered response set up a dual reaction in Mal. One, he was gratified to hear any acknowledgement of reavers at all, this close in. Two, his anger simmered to a boil that Mr. Universe, Book, and Wash had died to get that information out, and there was still only a pathetic little whimper of dissent when some gorram uni started flapping his ruttin' mouth like this.
The firestorm of the Miranda wave had been hottest and heaviest eight months ago while Mal and the crew had been recuperating and refitting Serenity. There had been protests and hysterical demands for explanations from the Allied worlds. "Exploratory committees" and "task forces" had been formed and a few high-level cabinet ministers had quickly resigned. It came out that some of the researchers and scientists that had worked on the Pax program had mysteriously disappeared several years ago, and there were criminal investigations into that. Families that had wanted to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones from Miranda after the "failed terraforming" experiment, but had been told by the government that the atmosphere was too toxic, had now banded together and were suing everyone they could think of and trying to raise enough money to fly to Miranda and find the remains.
It was the biggest scandal that the Alliance had ever faced. Even so, the Alliance had wobbled, but it hadn't fallen down. The operative had been right. The deaths of millions of people shocked the wealthy Core planets, but not enough to stop commerce or cause a permanent rift with the smoothly running machine that was the Alliance government. Miranda was something that had happened years ago, really, to people who shouldn't have been so reckless as to abandon the safety of the Core for the wilds of the Rim. Pax was merely a noble health experiment that had failed, as if the residents of Miranda were a plague-stricken town that had been given a bad batch of inoculations. Soon the sub-channels on the cortex were running the story that the Miranda wave had been manufactured by a revived separatist movement. Reavers? What reavers? Show us these "reavers," these man-beasts of some lurid penny dreadful, taunted one of the commentators. Fact was, a significant number of reavers had been killed in the battle off Mr. Universe's moon, and reaver attacks had dwindled to vague and unverifiable reports from the remotest worlds. The irony of this did not escape Malcolm Reynolds.
"You talkin' bout reavers?" Obnoxious drunk laughed loosely, wiping at a thin line of whiskey rolling down his chin. "They ain't real. I've never seen one, and I've been out in the black plenty of times. That Miranda wave was pure browncoat propaganda. My nephew, he's on the Westmark, he says his captain brought the word down himself that it was all a buncha –"
"They's real." The low, gravelly voice was familiar – too familiar.
Mal's closed his eyes briefly and almost groaned in frustration. Trust Jayne not to be able to keep still for half a ruttin' minute while he assayed the situation. He wasn't sure yet how many of the big hun dans surrounding the obnoxious guy were part of his posse. Oh, well, he shrugged inwardly, as usual, time to play it by ear. He turned and put his back against the bar, resting his elbows casually on the worn leather rim. He wished Zoë was there.
"Oh, yeah?" Obnoxious stood up, and he was a lot bigger standing than he was sitting. Still, the height and heft of Jayne made the guy look fairly benign in comparison. About five other guys looked edgy, though, like they were about to get to their feet and form some back-up. This was definitely Obnoxious' home territory. Mal's eyes flickered all around the saloon. There were more than those five, a lot more, and they were spread out.
"Yeah." Jayne's eyes were narrow as he swaggered forward a few feet, still holding the pool cue loosely in one hand. The noise level diminished rapidly as the budding scene in the middle of the bar caught the attention of the patrons.
Obnoxious looked around at his fan club, sniggering. "So you say you've seen 'em?"
"Seen 'em, killed 'em." Jayne nodded. "That Miranda wave was true."
"You killed reavers?" Obnoxious gasped out in a mocking, sing-song voice. "Hear that, gents? The big, dumb ox wants us to believe he killed him some reavers. He must be magical, like, because I thought reavers were all invincible. Maybe he offed some vampires and some frankensteins, too?"
"I believe it!" Tittered a booze-soaked female voice. Mal tracked it to a buxom blonde whose assets were just about fallin' out of her too-tight top. She'd been all over Obnoxious but a minute before, now she was gazing at Jayne with a familiar gleam in her eye. Jayne always did attract that type, Mal reflected. Well, to be honest, he attracted most women, until he opened his mouth. To Mal's surprise, other than giving a provocative smirk clearly intended to annoy Obnoxious, Jayne didn't appear to be interested. Huh.
"That's enough, Ling," Obnoxious didn't appear too happy that his gal had the look for Jayne.
"Get back here and finish this game," the guy that Jayne had been playing pool against called suddenly. Mal wasn't sure if he was trying to diffuse the situation, or provide a distraction for Obnoxious and his pals. "You ain't gonna get in a fight with Spanky while I got money on the line."
"Spanky?" Jayne repeated in amused disdain, arching an eyebrow. He sucked a drag of his cigar through his teeth and chuckled out the smoke. "Spanky. And here I was, takin' you all serious."
Obnoxious turned Spanky looked ugly.
"Tell us about the reavers!" An anonymous voice shouted.
"Hey, Spanky, let 'im speak out." Came another.
Jayne accepted the invitation. "Reavers is real. Get a little farther out and you'd know it. They rape women to death and eat children. Alive. When Spanky tells you that reavers ain't real, he don't know what the hell he's talking about." Jayne raised his voice. "I'm thinkin' Spanky ain't never been out in the black. I'm thinkin' Spanky ain't never been ten clicks outta this town. I'm thinkin' Spanky here is a big, fat liar."
There was muted laughter scattered among the clientele, which looked to rile Spanky up even further. He definitely didn't appreciate getting dissed in his own house.
"You shut up, fuckhead," Spanky growled dangerously.
Bombs away, Mal thought, knowin' Jayne Cobb really only had one conditioned response to those words.
Jayne took the cigar out of his mouth and gave a rakish grin.
"Make me."
&&&
Chinese:
go se – shit
hun dan – bastard