I own none of the characters. I just work here.
….
Finger lightly touching the trigger of his favourite rifle, Jeb Wilks disinterestedly examined the two people he was about to kill through his scope.
It was nothing personal; he was the go-to guy on Thracia if you happened to want someone removed from your way permanently. His current employer (he didn't know their name, and they didn't know his) wanted him to watch over an exchange of some sort and kill whoever approached from the southerly end of the street, once they had handed over whatever it was they were handing over.
The man in his scope appeared to be in his 40's, although he could have been anything up to sixty what with the current state of medical tech, from Wilks' position he could see that his hair was light brown and his only weaponry appeared to be an older model pistol on his leg.
His friend appeared to be much the same age, but with much darker skin and black hair. It would almost be a shame to kill a woman like that, Jeb thought.
Any woman who carries a sawn-off lever action has impeccable taste… But anyway.
I appeared as though they were still haggling with their contact, so Wilks drew his head back from the scope slightly to get a little more comfortable.
There was a shadow over his hand that shouldn't have been.
Wrenching a knife from his combat vest, he twisted to face whoever was standing over him, if he could throw it, maybe it would buy him the seconds to pull the pistol from his hip.
A small hand grasped his wrist as it began to arc forward in the throw. His arm continued in its motion but for some reason he couldn't open his fingers to throw and the weapon was being twisted toward his own heart
The last thought he had was that the eyes were wrong. He had seen boys girls that age who had fought in wars, killed for the criminal classes on many worlds and had terrible things done to them.
But none of them had eyes like the young woman who was sticking 10 inches of metal into his chest.
….
Malcolm Reynolds saw a small flurry of movement out of the corner of his eye. Meeting Zoe's gaze, he nodded imperceptibly, then sighed and drew his pistol on the man standing before him, Zoe followed suit
The man curled his lip. "That ain't such a smart idea, friend. Ripping off the people I work for is a game you don't wanna play…"
"Stow it." Mal interrupted. "You know what they say about turnabout being fair play?"
The man's face fell and he glanced over his shoulder at the roof of the warehouse where, instead of his shooter, there was a small figure dangling her legs over the edge, obscured mostly by shadows, but definitely not pointing a rifle at the two people with guns on him.
He turned back to deal with his very pissed smugglers.
"Listen, that wasn't my idea, my boss… He can be a prick, I'm jus' the guy that goes to pick stuff up y'know?"
Mal decocked his gun and put it back in its holster. Zoe kept her gun trained on their contact as the captain folded his arms.
"Do ya even have our credits?" He asked. They were supposed to be getting close to 25 thousand for transporting some mining equipment that had mysteriously disappeared and he was gonna be damned if he didn't get some sort of financial compensation for spending nearly three months in transit to this rock. Serenity was running low on pretty much everything from that trip alone.
Their buyer grimaced. "If I could just make a call?" He slowly pulled back his jacket to show the comms unit on his belt.
Zoe motioned in agreement and he gingerly unclipped it. "If I were you guys, I'd back off now. We know guys in the port, it'll be pretty easy for my bosses to ID your ship…"
Mal looked at Zoe and raised an eyebrow comically high. "I'm shakin' in my boots here, friend. But I think you better make that call."
The man pressed a few buttons, and then raised the communicator to his ear. "I need ya to bring me that case… yeah yeah I know what I said. The situation's changed… Just do it wudja?! Ok, alright." He lowered the device. "You'll have your money in a few minutes. But I really have to warn you…"
"Yeah yeah, we know; your bosses will find us and do all manner of unpleasant things. We get the idea." Mal said, taking out his own communicator. He pipped the device three times; the signal to Jayne that he was to bring the goods in on the mule.
Mal kicked at the dusty ground while Zoe stood stock still with her gun on their contact as they waited. After a few minutes Serenity's hovermule glided into the street, pulling a trailer weighed down with large crates.
As Jayne began unloading the trailer and making menacing faces at the double-crossing criminal a teenage boy jogged up from the other end of the alley and handed the man a small backpack, which he opened and withdrew a metal case.
He made to hand it to Mal, but Zoe raised her weapon. "Open the case."
The man undid the case's clasps and showed her the platinum credit bills, neatly stacked and wrapped in paper ties inside. "It's all there, see?"
Zoe remained unimpressed. "Take out all the bricks, undo them and spread them out, I wanna make sure some of that ain't gonna go bang soon as we're away from here."
As the buyer carefully began obeying Zoe's instructions, River appeared next to the mule, none of them had even seen her entering the street. She was carrying a long case under her arm, which she set on the mule's back seat and silently began helping Jayne unload crates.
After proving there were no nasty surprises concealed amongst the payment, then buyer stood up and backed away from the money. Mal fetched a bag from the mule and shoved the cash inside.
"Right," said the captain. "Y'all can explain to your bosses, for all the good I reckon it'll do, that I'm a man of my word: They wanted this stuff, I got 'em the stuff. I got paid. End of gorram story, they wanna pick a fight over that, let 'em know its their own damn fault."
He tossed the bag into the mule, and then hopped into the driver's seat. River and Jayne clambered into the back; Jayne drew his pistol and aimed it at their contact. "Gotcha covered Zoe."
Zoe backed away toward the mule, gracefully swinging herself in beside the captain.
"Take care now!" Called Jayne as they hummed away from the deal, twisted in his seat to keep his gun on the pair of crooks.
….
Some hours later, Marco Levantine was trying to explain to his boss how he had managed to lose 25,000 credits.
"I sent Ultan up to the roof afterwards and it turns out they got to your shooter, I couldn't have done anything! They'd 'a shot me!"
The man whose desk he was standing in front of took a drag on his cigarette. "If something like this happens again, I'm gonna have Lucas take you for a spin and kick you out the airlock at about 10 thousand feet… Understood? The only reason you ain't taking that trip right now is because I'm impressed you got the parts. God only know how you managed that one."
Marco's knees nearly buckled in relief. "I... Thank you very much sir..."
"Get out before I change my mind, you idiot."
Before He could reach the door, it opened and two men strode into the office. One of them grabbed Marco's collar and pushed him one-handed back in front of the desk.
The man behind the desk jumped to his feet. A submachine gun pointed at the intruders.
"You have about three seconds before I paint my back wall with your blood to explain what the absolute fuck you're doing in here!"
There was something weird about the pair, they moved mechanically, were expressionless and wearing identical dark suits.
Without letting go of Marco's collar, the slightly taller one spoke evenly. "You are Mr Smolov?"
"Who the hell wants to know?"
"We were led to believe by a man in the port registry office whose official salary you… supplement, that you purchased some equipment from some people earlier today."
"My business is not…"
The other man overrode him. "Do you recognise any of these people?" He held out several wanted posters.
Smolov narrowed his eyes. If these men were after the bastards who'd gotten away from Marco, where was the harm in letting them know what had gone down?
He lowered his weapon slightly. "It was Marco there that met 'em, we don't know any names or nothin'."
The wanted posters were shoved under Marco's nose.
"Yeah! I saw that one and the dark woman with the hair. Maybe the one with the moustache but I ain't certain…"
The posters were withdrawn and folded neatly into an inner pocket. The hand on Marco's shirt was also withdrawn and he noticed that it was covered in a light blue glove.
"Thank you for your time gentlemen." Said the shorter one, as he spoke, he withdrew a small object from his jacket and clicked it, two tiny rods shot out of either end.
"We ain't done here!" Smolov waved his gun. "Who the hell d'ya think you are? Comin' inta my office askin…"
He stopped talking as a sudden pain filled his head; it was like there was something inside his skull expanding at an alarming rate. His vision blurred and he felt something warm drip down his lip.
Smolov dropped the gun and put his hands on the desk to steady himself. "Go tsao de…" He looked at Marco, who was on one knee, blood pouring from his nose and eyes.
He tried to talk but there was something liquid in his mouth.
The two crooks dropped to the floor almost in unison. Blood spread slowly across the linoleum floor.
The man stowed the little device in his pocket while his partner took out a datapad.
"The port lists at least fourteen firefly class vessels in the dock or immediate airspace. Three more will exit air traffic control's scan sphere within four minutes."
"Are there any Navy craft in the area we can contact?"
"The closest vessel is the Magellan, however they are outside the system and out of radioing distance. It'll take at least a week for any message to reach them."
The pair walked out of the room. They had been so close this time.
….
River padded down the ladder to her room, she unslung the rifle case from her shoulder and threw it onto the bed. She had felt slightly bad taking it from Wilks, but on the other hand, he was a sociopathic gun-for-hire.
As she kicked off her boots the room wobbled.
Two men falling to the ground, haemorrhaging from the mucosal membranes…
When reality reasserted itself she was lying on the floor.
They were on to her again.
….
This was chapter 1 of Retrieval, the prologue to which I wrote many moons ago. Sorry about the delay. College happened.
