Malcolm Reynolds never considered himself an overly intuitive man, but he knew when something felt wrong and this felt wrong. This felt about as wrong as anything he'd felt in a long time. What bothered him about it most was that he could not put his finger on why. His last job for Badger had been pretty much on the up-and-up, as were the three before it. No reason for bad feelings, no reason for killing.
He and Zoe had eliminated just about anyone that might want him dead, leaving only former fans of the Tams or those annoyed by the battle at Blue Star as possibilities. Pirates wouldn't operate this close to a way station as popular or well policed as Persephone and smugglers tended not to shoot at folk they might be working with in the future. It just wasn't done.
As for the Alliance, they had Serenity in the palm of their hands for the better part of a year and did nothing. They could have liquidated Mal, River, all of them if they'd wanted. Mal could see no reason why they would have waited until now. He'd have thought the whole thing a simple case of mistaken identity, if not for the grenade outside Badger's office?
That is not to say that someone trying to kill them was unusual, it was in fact quite a common occurrence, but Reynolds could always figure the 'why' of the situation. More times than not he'd figured 'why' before the person was doing the trying. That allowed him to develop some sort of plan. But this time all he had was a bad feeling. The kind of felling he'd had many times in combat when his Unit was being hung out on its own. Things just didn't add up.
Trusting those feelings had kept him and Zoe alive during the war and for a decade since then, but nonetheless they were unsettling. Mal and his first officer made their way back toward the docks, straining their minds, trying to develop some sort of angle on their situation. They needed a new perspective.
In the past they'd had Shepherd Book's sound, albeit somewhat spiritual, counsel. Even though Mal never figured how a Shepard of Men's souls seemed to know so much about the seamy underbelly of society, he never ignored Book's advice. Seeing things through his eyes gave Mal a better chance of figuring the 'why' of it before it got them dead. Since Book's passing Mal had come to recognize how much he had relied on that perspective.
"Sir – I think we should either start drinking profusely or get back to the ship." Zoe interjected.
"Right." Mal replied. "It may best we leave Persephone sooner than later."
The streets were now comparatively empty as they left the former market district. The vendors had packed up their carts in the early light of dusk and had been gone for hours. Surveying their surroundings was much easier, but the empty left them on edge all the same.
"Sir." Zoe said pensively as the entered the docks. "Badger seemed to know a lot more about what happened last year, with the Reavers and Miranda, than he's let on before. How can he know about that?"
"I'm guessing his contacts are more official in nature than in the past."
"Do you think the Alliance is trying to tie up loose ends?"
"Why now? They've had better opportunities."
"What did Badger mean about us seeing too much?"
"All I see is folk trying to kill us."
"Maybe that's because it's us doing the looking." Zoe said. "Maybe we're over thinking this."
Mal stopped outside of Serenity's closed cargo hold and opened the dock control panel, waiting for Zoe to finish her thought.
"I can't believe I'm about to say this Sir - but maybe we should get Jayne's opinion?"
Mal looked at his first mate with a somewhat more than skeptical look. It wasn't like Zoe to think like that without a belly full of some sort of spirits.
"I think we might need the perspective of someone who's not used to getting shot at." Mal suggested. " I was thinking more like the doctor?"
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