Chapter 4
Mal had been to Aberdeen several times before. He didn't particularly like the place, but he could probably count on one hand the places in the 'verse he actually liked, and some of those places didn't even exist anymore, so he wouldn't put that against it. It was rather well developed for a Rim planet, at least in parts. There were four or five cities of considerable size, a profitable mining industry, and a decent infrastructure for most of the population of about 12 million. Including hospitals and clinics that were more than a hole in the ground and a man with leeches.
"Life is better for a lot of people since the war," Inara had pointed out to him once.
"That don't help the ones bein' screwed over," he'd scoffed.
But at the end of the day, she wasn't wrong. Not in the strictest sense. The Union of Allied Planets had proved, on some worlds, that they possessed the resources needed to make the 'verse a decent place for everybody, if only they could be bothered to. If only there was something in it for them. Like for instance the rhodium ores on Aberdeen.
He wasn't going to argue that case with Inara, though. Nor any other. Not anymore.
He cleared his mind of her, or tried to, and turned to Kaylee in the passenger seat next to him. She looked nervous, which made his heart ache.
"It'll be fine," he assured her. "These people aren't dangerous. They are nurses and doctors. You like doctors, don't you?"
"If you say so," she replied, and she smiled a little at his joke, but her eyes kept darting across the empty quarry in front of them. Then she glanced back over her shoulder at the gravel road they'd traveled along and towards the place where Serenity was parked, a mile or so down the road and out of sight.
It was just the two of them on the Dragonfly. The crate was placed on the bed of the truck behind their seats, nudged between others to look less suspicious.
Mal couldn't help feeling a little uneasy himself, mostly because they had shown up at the rendezvous point before their contacts. He usually wouldn't mind that, as it gave him time to survey the location and its terrain, to identify potential hazards and possible traps. But that was when he'd shown up early. This time they had arrived precisely at the agreed-upon time and found the place, an old, abandoned quarry a few miles outside the nearest town, empty.
He was careful not to show his concern in front of Kaylee, though. Not that he would have brought her if he'd really believed there'd be trouble.
"You're only here to make me look less lonesome," he told her again. "If anything happens, which it won't, just drop to the ground and try to look less menacing."
She laughed a little, and he flashed her another reassuring smile before he swept his eyes across the quarry again. They had stopped at the bottom of the pit, like the instructions had read. The road ahead continued, around a bend, and he stared at that bend, waiting for someone or something to emerge from there. Which might not be such a good idea, come to think of it. Maybe they would come from a different direction.
"Zoë?" he called. "See anything?"
"Nothin'," she crackled in his earpiece. "Can't see too far up the road, though."
The sound of her voice, and knowing that she had his back, made him relax a little. But it also reawakened the irritation he'd felt over this whole setup. Zoë was a terrific shot, no question, but Jayne, despite all his many other flaws, was better, and he'd much preferred to have him as the back-up and Zoë at his side. And Kaylee out of harm's way.
Luckily, he didn't have to wallow in that thought for too long. Just then a vehicle finally came around the corner and towards them. "Here they are," he said and jumped out of the driver's seat to greet them. He didn't draw his gun, but let his hand rest casually on the handle, just in case.
The approaching vehicle was a hovercraft of a newer model, and he counted two people onboard, both women by the look of it. Mal forced his face into a smile, ready to put on a front of courtesy and pleasantness, but as the vehicle came to a stop and the women climbed down from it, he felt that smile melt away. Something was... off.
He couldn't put his finger on what, exactly, which wasn't the first time, and his gut feeling had been wrong before, truth be told. He knew better than to trust it completely. But he also knew better than to ignore it.
One of the women, a redhead, flashed a grin at him and he watched her warily. Past experiences had taught him to be a little cautious around redheads. Which wasn't necessarily fair, and this woman was clearly not YoSaffBridge, so he guessed he owed her the benefit of the doubt, even though it kind of looked like she wanted to eat him.
"Good afternoon, Captain." It was the other one who greeted him. She was middle-aged, with graying hair, swept back and buzzed on one side. She wore a white tracksuit, a strange choice of color for a drive along a dusty road, and guns holstered to both hips.
And there it was, the thing that made him uneasy:
Too many guns.
"I'll need the authorization password," he told her. There was none, but it was a good way to test her.
"Oh, sorry," she smiled. "Of course."
She pulled her guns, as did her friend.
As did Mal.
He was quicker, but outgunned, and as luck would have it, he realized that before he could fire. All around them people popped out from behind boulders and camouflage tarps, and surrounded him and his Dragonfly. He heard a little yelp from Kaylee.
"Drop it," the woman in white said. The smile was gone, and her face was hard and stern. But not really angry, not threatening, just no nonsense businesslike. It reminded him of Zoë.
Yeah, Zoë...
He was half expecting her long-distance shot to start the fight.
It never came.
Which was probably for the best, all things considered.
He holstered his gun and slowly raised his arms. "Let's play nice here, lady."
"That's what I'm doin'," she replied. "And I ain't no lady."
"I'm sorry," he quipped, "the hips fooled me."
She was short and stocky, but there were certainly some womanly curves under that white tracksuit.
"What was that about playin' nice?" she spat back at him.
Mal risked a sideways glance at Kaylee. She had dismounted the Dragonfly at some point, and she stood to his left, a little behind him, pressed up against the vehicle, eyes wide with fear.
The women had noticed her too. The redhead trained her gun at her, but the other one, who was clearly the boss, waved her off.
"Don't fret, sweetie," she said to Kaylee, but kept half an eye on Mal while she spoke. "My beef ain't with you. In fact, I don't want you caught in the crossfire should your captain try anything funny. You can leave."
Kaylee's eyes flashed to Mal in confusion. He locked his eyes with hers in an effort to calm her. "Do it," he told her.
"But, Cap'n –"
"Just do it. Just get out of here."
She did. She stepped away slowly at first, backwards, with her arms shakingly outstretched, but as soon as she had put a little distance between them, her flight response took over, and she turned on her heels and ran up the road for cover.
"I don't like shootin' girls," the woman in white told Mal as he looked back at her. "That's also why I haven't snuffed out your sniper."
She nodded towards the hills overlooking the quarry, and Mal turned to see the small figure of Zoë standing on top of one of them with her arms in the air, surrounded by at least three guys. "I'm sorry, sir," her voice crackled in his earpiece.
"Now, men on the other hand," the woman continued. "The 'verse could use a little less of them, in my opinion."
"Is that so?"
"I here tell you're not the worst kind, though. So I'ma let you leave, too. As long as you hand over that crate without any fuss."
"Take it, then," Mal said through gritted teeth.
"Thank you kindly."
She waved for her people, and they came closer, with guns drawn and teeth bared.
"Wise choice, Captain Reynolds," one of them said, and Mal felt his innards turn to ice and then catch fire as he recognized the speaker.
The braids, the comically large ears...
He should have known.
"You're being cooperative," Rufus Miller continued. "He said you'd be."
Mal said nothing. But he wanted to. Oh, he wanted to. He wanted to have lots of words with a certain someone. But that guy wasn't here.
He watched as the men hauled the crate from the Dragonfly and loaded it onto the other vehicle, and he wondered what was worse: the loss of money or the sense of losing.
"Will you at least tell me who it was got the better of me?" he asked.
She exchanged a look with the redhead, who just chuckled and walked away, then looked back at him. "I'm Svetlana Peng," she said. "You will not have heard of me, I reckon." She holstered her guns and turned to go. "But now you have."
She climbed onto her vehicle along with the redhead and a couple of the others and drove away. The rest slithered off too, leaving just him and the Dragonfly in the settling dust.
"Sir?" Zoë was back on the radio. "You alright?"
"Just dandy. You?"
"Didn't even touch me."
"I'm coming," he said and climbed stiffly back onto the hovertruck. "Meet you back at the ship."
He picked up Kaylee halfway there. "Cap'n!" she exclaimed when she saw him.
"Good girl," was all he said as she climbed onboard.
"What happened back there?"
"They took the cargo."
"Are you okay?"
"Don't worry 'bout me."
She must have caught on to the suppressed anger in his voice, because there were no more questions after that.
They arrived at the ship a few moments before Zoë. She jogged up the ramp just as Mal parked the Dragonfly in the cargo bay and climbed down from it.
Simon had been there waiting. "What's going on?" he asked, but quickly took a step back when Mal gave a couple of empty fuel cans a solid kick that scattered them in all directions.
"I should have seen it coming!" he snarled at Zoë. "You see him?"
"Miller? Yes, I saw him."
"Qīng wā cāo de liú máng!" Mal gave the nearest can another kick and then yelled out again when it hurt a little more than he'd planned. Shepherd Book entered from the commons just then, adding his quizzical frown to those of Simon and Kaylee.
"Cargo got stolen," Zoë patiently explained, then looked at Mal. "Must've taken out the real middlemen before we even got here."
"That son of a bitch," Mal muttered.
"Who?" Simon had the audacity to ask.
"Jayne," Mal hissed at him. "That bèn tiān sheng de yī duī ròu sold us out."
"We don't know that, sir," Zoë said.
"We don't?" he snapped at her. "His former crewmate just happened to show up, they know the drop site, they know our modus operandi… What does it look like to you?"
"I said we don't know, not that it don't look that way."
"But you're all unharmed?" Shepherd Book shot in. "All of you?"
"We're fine," Zoë confirmed.
"Well, that's the important thing," Book said. He reached out to pat Kaylee's slumped shoulder. She had stepped off the Dragonfly and was standing next to it, staring alternately at Mal and her feet.
"We're getting it back," Mal said as he wriggled himself out of his jacket and threw it on the truck.
"How?" Zoë asked.
"Don't know yet," he reluctantly admitted. "I'll come up with something. First we need to find out where they're headed."
"Again, how?"
"The tracker." He was already headed for the stairs.
"Don't Jayne know about that too?"
"They need to find it first. We might have a little time. I'll get in touch with our contacts, see if they're willing to share the tracker's data if we promise to right this."
"Sir..."
"Just get the ship ready!" He stomped up the stairs to the bridge. "This is a job we're finishin'!"
"But, Cap'n," Kaylee called after him, "do we really believe that Jayne –"
She stopped herself, then addressed Zoë instead. "We don't really believe that, do we?"
Mal didn't stick around to hear his first mate's response.
Svetlana didn't skimp when it came to celebrating. Jayne could almost see why the men all loved her so much, when he saw how freely the beer ran that night. The girls had even come down from their comfy upstairs castle and joined them in the mess hall for the occasion.
Jayne never turned down free drinks, and it would look suspicious if he didn't join in anyway, so he did. He just didn't enjoy himself.
"Like stealing candy," Rufus laughed, not for the first time. "You were right, man. He is a sap, and that was one strange crew."
Jayne said nothing. He was glad Mal, Zoë and Kaylee had all walked away alive and unharmed, according to Rufus anyway, but of course he couldn't show him that.
All he could do was try to stake out a new path for himself.
He could not go back. That much was clear. Not now. Mal had seen Rufus. If he hadn't suspected Jayne before, he certainly blamed him now, and there was no way Jayne would ever be able to convince him otherwise. Serenity, and whatever it was that he'd had there was lost, along with all his possessions. That bridge was utterly, thoroughly burned. Which left two options: either he convinced Svetlana to let him off at the next port, or he convinced her to let him join them.
He took another swig of his beer, and then let his eyes seek her out. She was on the other side of the room, on a coach along the wall, surrounded by her girls (minus the pilot, who was on the bridge, you know, piloting) and cuddled up next to Moab. Jayne had been right in his assumption that he was her lover. Probably the only reason why he had access to the upper decks and the rest of the guys hadn't. Apparently, you had to sleep your way to the top here.
Well, he could do that. Better than killing anyway, which wouldn't have bothered him either.
"We'll be landing at our base in two hours tops," Rufus, who seemed to relish in offering up information unprompted, droned on. "I think you ought to make yourself indispensable by then. Svetlana's got no problem kill– Hey, where you goin'?"
Jayne left him holding his beer and made his way across the room. One of the guys, already a little drunk, bumped into him, and Jayne shoved him out of the way with a powerful push he for some reason didn't retaliate. It was enough to cause some commotion, though, and earn him Svetlana's attention. She looked away from her beau for a second.
"I'd like my gun back now," Jayne declared.
Svetlana gave a wave with her hand, someone killed the music, and the room fell silent.
"What did you say?"
"I want my gun back!"
Moab looked like he was about to step in, but Svetlana stopped him with just a look.
"You're clearly a troublemaker, Jayne Cobb," she said. "Why the hell would I want you armed?"
"Because I can be your troublemaker," he retorted. Someone chuckled.
Svetlana kept her eyes on him for a few moments. Then she turned to Moab and smiled lovingly at him. Jayne felt a sharp pang of irritation, and because it quelled the sense of shame that had been gnawing at him, he welcomed it.
"What I gave you was solid," he argued.
She looked back at him. "It was. And I haven't killed you, have I? Now, have some beer, enjoy the party. Don't worry, I will make my choice." She turned her head. "Put the music back on."
You look out for you…
"Crate's tagged."
She whipped her head back at him. Moab straightened in his seat. "What?"
"There's a tracker in the crate. They'll know where to find ya."
Svetlana and Moab exchanged glances. A couple of the women leaned in close and whispered something.
"Get it," Moab ordered a few of the men, and less than five minutes later the crate had been hauled from the cargo bay, emptied, and literally torn to pieces.
It took another five minutes for Moab to find the tiny thing, smaller than a baby's fingernail, and break it loose. Jayne had remained standing in the same spot, and as it was pulled from the crate and held up for Svetlana to see, he wasn't sure whether he felt triumphant or just sad.
Maybe a bit of both.
Which sort of felt like anger.
Moab dropped the tracker on the floor and crushed it under his heel, and the crew all laughed and cheered. One of them even gave Jayne a thump on the back. Svetlana said nothing, but he caught her eye, and she did look a little less hostile as the music was turned back on and the party started up again.
Rufus slithered up to him. "You're learning," he grinned.
Jayne just scowled at him, grabbed another beer can, and stomped off.
There had to be somewhere on this gorramn ship where a man could be alone.