Beta'd by KrisEleven. Many thanks!

Translations: Are below.

Jing chang mei yong de—Consistently useless

Zhen dao mei—Just our luck

Hun dan—Bastard

Ma shang—Now

Chapter 8—Silken Interference

In the black, March of the year 2517

Inara climbed the stairs to the bridge and smiled at Wash, who had just set down two of his plastic dinosaurs. "By all means, continue. I just came up for a little stargazing."

"They're asleep now," Wash replied brightly. "Worn out from a day of frolicking."

"I don't doubt it." Inara chuckled.

The wave screen crackled to life, and a woman's annoyed face appeared. "I need to speak to Captain Reynolds right away."

The face was unknown to Inara, but apparently not to Wash, for he switched on the com. "Mal, I think we've got a problem. You've got a wave from Captain Devi."

"Hold on, I'll be up to the bridge in a sec." Mal's voice came back through the com.

Inara frowned as Wash fiddled with the dials, trying to get better reception. It was probably best she stay out of this, but she couldn't help some curiosity about their current job. She moved back so she couldn't be seen in the wave screen just as Mal hurried up the stairs.

"Here, that's the best I can do." Wash moved away to stand behind Mal.

The woman—Captain Devi—looked at Mal. "I'll just jump straight into this and say you're not going to like what I have to tell you. If it's any consolation, I'm suffering equally."

"Did you find out what's wrong with them engine parts?"

Devi scowled. "No. But Benson got snatched by people who wanted to know who I'd sent them with, and that jing chang mei yong de idiot went and told them all about how I'd hired you to deliver."

"Zhen dao mei. So we're gonna have people after us."

"I'm afraid so. Good news is, they want those parts, so they won't blow you up. Of course, if they take your ship, they might just shoot everyone aboard. And if my gorram shipment doesn't come through, my clients are going to be mad as hell."

Mal glared. "Having a pissed-off client don't really compare with getting my crew killed, Devi."

"Why do you think I'm telling you this? It's not exactly flattering to admit the fool I hired spilled his guts at the threat of a little torture. Anyway, you've got a day's head start on them, but I'd go for hard burn until you're further away."

"Right."

"Good luck, Captain Reynolds." Devi ended the wave.

Inara frowned. From what she knew about this job, it seemed odd for people to be so determined to get their hands on a selection of engine parts. Unless…

Wash cleared his throat. "Want me to do like she said, go for hard burn?"

"Can we?" Mal asked.

"For a while. Not all the way to Beylix, but whoever's after us probably can't either."

"Then do that."

Wash went to the com. "Kaylee, need you in the engine room."

"Comin'!" Kaylee's voice came back.

Inara stepped forward. "Actually, I have a—"

Mal turned to scowl at her. "Don't see how it's your business."

"Getting shot would be very much my business."

"How long were you listening, anyway?"

Inara ignored him, turning to Wash. "Did you have Kaylee look at the engine parts to see if they might have been particularly valuable?"

Mal cut in. "We did. Couldn't find nothing amiss."

"What about the crates? Did you look at those?"

Mal blinked. "The crates?"

"Yes, Mal, the crates. Were there secret compartments?"

"No way, we'd have noticed."

"Not if my theory is correct." Inara turned and swept from the room.

Mal followed. "What'd that be? The theory of me not having eyes?"

OoOoO

"Silk?" Jayne stared, clearly puzzled, at the shimmering folds of cloth Inara held. "Why would folk wanna smuggle silk?"

Zoe pried one side of the second crate apart. "There's more in here. Cloth's thin enough we wouldn't have found it, we weren't looking for it."

"Couldn't people smuggle credits in this kinda thing?" Kaylee asked. "Why the pretties?"

"This particular type of silk is hand-woven and very valuable," Inara explained. "The Companion House on the planet we just left put a bulletin up on the Cortex, saying that some of their goods had been stolen. The timing aroused my suspicion."

"So we're risking our lives over cloth," Mal grumbled. "This just ain't my day. 'Sides, who'd trample over blood just so they could boast their clothing was a shred rarer? Be like wearing a haunted dress."

Inara gave a charming smile. "I'm surprised the idea of a reward for the return for this silk hasn't entered your thief's brain yet."

"We gotta live to collect. Kaylee, have you set up the hard burn?"

"It's all shiny, Captain."

"Good. Wash, I want someone tracking for another ship all the time. No point in letting 'em sneak up on us."

OoOoO

"Hey, 'Nara!" Kaylee's grinning face appeared from under the engine. "Didja need somethin'?"

Inara smiled down at her friend. "Actually, I was looking for Mal or Zoe. I have to schedule appointments in a few minutes, and I need to know how long we'll be on Beylix."

"Oh, well, I think it'll be a few days at least. Captain said we can buy those synchronizers if the job comes through, and we might have to do a few repairs, especially if we keep on with the hard burn." Kaylee scratched her ear. "Zoe's up on the bridge with Wash. Captain was in a right state the last time I saw him, so ya might wanna try her first."

Inara laughed. "Well, we wouldn't want to infringe on the captain's right to be in a bad mood. Thank you." She left the engine room, holding her skirts out of the grease, and climbed the stairs to the bridge.

Zoe was leaning against the console, watching her husband attack a triceratops with a pterodactyl. "I have horns! You cannot think to thwart my will!" "Haha, I can fly! I have a PhD in will-thwarting!"

Inara stood in the doorway. "I don't mean to interrupt, but, Zoe, do you know how long we'll be on Beylix?"

"Captain's planning on five days," Zoe replied, still watching the dinosaurs battle.

"Ah! You pricked my wing, you three-horned hun dan!" "See? It's not the length of the horns, it's what you do with them!"

"Thank you, Zoe." Inara retreated from the bridge towards her own shuttle. As she neared the kitchen, she heard the sounds of Mal and Jayne arguing.

"—not hearing this again, Jayne."

"But we could make real coin off it, and ya just—"

"If 'Nara's right, we can return that silk to the Companion House, get something for our trouble."

"Not as much as if we sold it ourselves. Come on, Mal—"

"Listen, we know as close to nothing as you can get about who buys that stuff or how much it's worth or whether anyone's likely to come after us for infringing on their market. Ain't worth it."

"Ya just don't want 'Nara to think you're stealin' from other whores like her."

"Leave 'Nara out of it, Jayne. She don't make my decisions for me."

Inara moved away before she could hear any more and crossed to her shuttle, sliding the door shut behind her. The silk coverlet on her bed was mussed, and she automatically moved to straighten it.

"This stuff's real shiny, 'Nara," Kaylee had said last night, flopping on her belly on the bed. "Didja get it from a client?"

Inara smiled softly at the memory. Telling her friend about clients could be better than entertaining the clients themselves, though it truly wasn't fair to compare. One was work, the other was play. Besides, Kaylee never got bored or jaded, and, conversely, never pretended she liked a story when she didn't.

Of course, the coverlet Kaylee had been asking about at that point was one Inara had bought herself, specifically chosen to create the mood she wanted for her place of union. She didn't know she could ever sleep comfortably in that bed, any more than she could entertain clients in her own. It was only healthy, after all, to keep one's work and rest spaces separate.

On a whim, Inara left the coverlet mussed, and went to sit in front of her appointment screen. "Beylix. The city of Thetis. I am available to make appointments."

Mahidol Angchuan was waiting to speak with her at this time, she knew. She tapped on the screen and his face appeared. "Inara. It is wonderful to see with you again."

Inara curved her lips. "I'm glad to say the feeling is mutual."

"I do hope you will be arriving after the tenth of March. My business affairs will quite occupy me before that, and to miss you would be a tragedy."

"I will be available in a few days," Inara promised, "and will be staying until the fifteenth." She cast her eyes down modestly—Mahidol favored such things, she had heard from other Companions. "I should be glad if we happened to meet in that time..."

OoOoO

"...and I'd appreciate it very much if I could, ah, have you come. To my estate. Um, I am available the seventeenth..."

Inara turned off the message the would-be client had left her. An hour of sitting in front of the screen was about all she could do at a time, especially when two of her messages turned out to be advertisements from Beylix Waffle Cone Central. She would be having a word with the Guild about how they had gotten her wave code.

As often happened when she was left to herself, Inara's thoughts drifted towards Mal. Of course, such thoughts were entirely unsuitable. A Companion owed it to each of her clients to give them her full attention, to not be preoccupied by thoughts of other partners. It was part of what separated them from the unlicensed. When a man or woman hired a Companion, they weren't just paying for sex, they were paying for emotional attention. Mal took entirely too much of that attention without even meaning to.

It was funny, considering how disapproving the heads of her profession would be if they knew of her feelings, that she was attracted to Mal partially because she was a Companion, because part of a Companion's job was to help clients work out their problems, and that was what had drawn Inara to that profession in the first place. She knew Mal disliked intimacy, and she wanted to help.

Only it was unlikely to endear her to Mal if he knew that part of her attraction to him came because his problems appealed to her talents.

It was a pity she couldn't talk to Kaylee about this. Her friend, for all her seeming lack of guile, had a way of seeing through the trappings to the direct issue. Kaylee's simplicity tugged at her heart as much as Mal's complexity, but with Kaylee, there was no desire to fix anything. In fact, Inara admitted to herself, there was a certain desire to be fixed, to pour all her problems in Kaylee's lap and cry on her shoulder. But a Companion's shields were there for a reason, and they couldn't come down just because she had some mad longing to have Kaylee tinker with her as she tinkered with Serenity, making her strong enough to go another day. Inara was strong enough on her own. She had to be.

She heard footsteps outside the door, and Mal strolled into her room without knocking. "I'm sure whatever you had to say is very important and completely justifies your entering my shuttle before I've given you permission."

"Oh, yeah. Real urgent," Mal assures her. "Just hoping you could get in touch with your House, ask 'em if the fancy cloth some idiot stuffed in our engine crates is what they lost."

"That couldn't wait?"

Mal shrugged. "Apparently not."

Inara rolled her eyes. "I will speak with them soon. At the moment, I am making appointments with my clients." She leaned over casually to turn off her screen, and hit the playback button by accident.

"Got a hankering for hazelnut? Want to chow down on chocolate? Then drop by Beylix Waffle Cones! Best in the 'verse, by vote of—" Inara swung around and poked her screen, silencing the unctuous voice.

Mal raised his eyebrows. "Right. Clients. Absolutely."

Inara opened her mouth to respond, but her retort was cut off by Zoe's urgent voice through the com. "Captain, we need you on the bridge, ma shang. Kaylee, get to the engine room if you're not there already."

Mal was off in a second, Inara hurrying behind him. It took something serious to send Zoe that off-balance.

Jayne, Wash, and Zoe were gathered around the wave screen. "—hold on just a minute," Wash was saying, "he'll be able to talk with you."

"My patience is running low," declared an unfamiliar voice. "You have something of mine that I wish returned."

Mal shouldered his way to the front of the group. "You calling us thieves? 'Cause that just might not be the best way of getting what you want."

"Believe me, Captain, I have absolutely no interest in whether you are a thief or the king of Ariel, unless, of course, either career involves you taking what I want."

"And you're saying that's what's happened now?"

"Precisely."

"Well, why don't you just tell us what it is you think we have, and we'll tell you whether you're right." Inara and Zoe rolled their eyes in unison as Mal grinned at the screen, the picture of a man who just solved all the problems of the 'verse.

"Because I have no reason to believe you would be telling the truth. I'm afraid the only solution is for us to search your vessel."

"The only solution, huh? Pardon, but it's sounding like you're suffering from a severe lack of imagination."

"Oh, really?" The unfamiliar voice was apparently trying to sound threatening. Inara scoffed inwardly. Some people just couldn't skip the posturing.

"There's all kinds of things that could happen instead. First and foremost being, of course, that we just take off before you get here. Think of that?"

"You are annoying, Captain. I may have to blow you out of the sky."

Jayne gave the screen an incredulous look. "Are ya always like this?"

"Yeah," Wash added. "Are we supposed to be intimidated or something?"

"You, ahem, 'blow us out of the sky,' and you'll lose whatever it is you want," Mal told the man on the screen. "Way I see it, your best choice is to negotiate."

"I do not negotiate. I am obeyed."

The crew of Serenity exchanged baffled looks. "Not by us, you ain't," Mal finally said.

"If you don't show a little respect—" The screen went blank.

Wash fiddled with the dial. "This isn't a malfunction. He cut the connection."

Zoe turned to Mal. "Sir, do you think we should—"

With a static noise, the wave flashed back into action, and a new voice floated out. "I apologize for my employer. He seems to have bungled things again."

"I have not!" shouted the first man from off-screen. "You know nothing about dealing with their types! Their brain structure has been analyzed as inferior on three Core planets!"

"Only three?" Zoe asked, straight-faced.

"You're disappointing this man here." Wash pointed at Jayne. "He was hoping for seven at least."

"Your amateur psychology has no place in the black," the new voice told the first. "You pay me to handle this kind of thing. Well, let me handle it."

"Modern doctors from various fields have declared that those from the border planets are instinctual followers! If you just act like you're in charge—"

Inara peered over Zoe's shoulder to see the first man trying to wrestle the second away from the screen. After a few moments, the former disappeared and the latter cut the connection.

Kaylee's voice crackled through the com. "Is there, um, anythin' I should be doin'?"

"Not just yet," Mal told her.

"I wonder what he'd make of my dinosaurs," Wash said thoughtfully.

"The triceratops would no doubt require a Freudian analysis," Inara informed him. "As would Jayne's obsession with guns."

"Who's Freud?" Mal demanded.

"A doctor from Earth-That-Was. Mainly a museum piece now, but psychology is part of a Companion's training. If you had more knowledge of it, you might avoid provoking at least three bar fights on any planet we land on."

"Hey. One was Jayne's fault."

The wave screen flashed back into action. "Right." The second man's cheekbone was now red and swollen, but he seemed relatively unfazed. "My employer has been temporarily neutralized."

"Neutralized?" Jayne asked puzzled.

"He knocked him out," Zoe translated.

"I have a proposal for you," said the employer-neutralizer. "I've heard you're shipping out with some Companion. No doubt she can tell you how much the House would pay to have that silk returned. I'm prepared to offer twice that amount."

Mal frowned. "Why?"

"My employer has some aunt whose husband wants it, and he's a bad man to cross. Got quite the reputation for that, in fact. We made an agreement with him, and I'd rather take the loss of coin than not get him what he wants."

"So what's your proposal?"

"We'll send you coordinates for a meeting place. Simple exchange."

"No offense, but we've been ambushed a goodly number of times in our illustrious career," Mal told him.

"So have we, but I'm afraid at this point we have no choice." The employer-neutralizer scowled.

"Then we pick the coordinates."

"If you must."

"Right, then. I'll send them along." Mal switched off the screen.

"I don't like it, sir." Zoe looked at her captain. "They gave in too quick."

Inara knew she'd probably regret giving advice, but jumped in anyway. "They may very well have an advantage over us that is so great they don't need to pick their own meeting place."

"Ya just don't wanna give the silk to anyone but your own folk," Jayne declared. "I say we do it."

Mal glanced at Inara, but addressed himself to Zoe. "Whatever job we'd take in place of this could be worse, easy. We ain't trying to sell that gorram cloth on the market, just making a deal with them as can. Think Jayne's got the right of it after all."

Inara moved silently away, back to her shuttle. She should really be glad the job was out of her hands. She knew hardly anything about smuggling or crime of any kind, and had no desire to learn. It would just entangle her further in a dangerous world. Mal's world. Kaylee's world.

But there were times when her own job seemed make-believe, even to her. She was reminded of that when her clients wanted to enact fantasies that they had known each other forever, that she was a lover who had always been there and would continue to be so. Inara knew she was providing an important service to those who, for one reason or another, were not able to find affection elsewhere. But she was always aware that what she did was only a substitute for long-lasting love.

It was times like this Inara wished she was more than just the Ambassador on Serenity. She wished she was crew.