Badger grinned, displaying those rickety, off-color front teeth again. “So,” he said, “if we’re all done ’ere, I’ll be ’eading back to town. Today being Alliance Day, I do a brisk trade in moonshine, float, angel tears and other such recreational substances. I gather you lot ’ave other things to attend to in town as well?”
“Where exactly did you gather that?” Mal said. He figured Badger was just fishing. No sense giving him information he didn’t need.
“Well, I just assumed.” Badger stuffed the manifest back in his pocket.
“Better see to your ’shine,” Mal said. “And also to mindin’ your own business.”
Unruffled, Badger strolled to the edge of the loading ramp, waving for the forklift operator to accompany him. The forklift itself was Serenity’s own and remained on board. Then Badger and the other two minions descended. One of the goons got behind the wheel of a battered land speeder parked near the foot of the ramp. Badger climbed into the seat beside him, waving at Mal and Zoë like he was the crowned king of Londinium.
“Perhaps we’ll run into each other in town,” Badger said as the speeder’s engine noisily started up. “Over a libation celebrating the end of a completely unnecessary and yet ultimately obscenely profitable war.”
“I’m thinkin’ probably not,” Mal said.
“War’s over, Captain,” Badger reminded him. He grinned at Mal. “Officially, anyway.”
Mal didn’t respond. Lot of folks enjoyed reminding him of what he already knew.
Then Badger and his lackeys putt-putted off, the gray clouds of exhaust drifting up into the haze. Mal knew he had a tendency to underestimate Badger because the man seemed so gorramn stupid. But stupid and dangerous weren’t mutually exclusive.
Look at Jayne.
“Well, that’s over,” Zoë said, the relief in her voice. “Time to chase up that other job.”
“We’re not gettin’ investigated or arrested today,” Mal told Zoë sternly. “Not calling attention of any sort to ourselves.”
“Of course not, sir,” Zoë said.
“Good,” he said. “Now let’s go into town and bust up a bar.”
She gave him a look.
“Just kidding,” he said. “Jayne, you coming?”
Jayne Cobb had just sauntered into the cargo bay. He tugged down the earflap chin ties of his yellow and orange woolen hat, seating the thing on his skull and centering the pom-pom atop it. His adoring, semiliterate mother had designed and knitted the fetching item of headgear, and it was one of Jayne’s most prized non-lethal possessions. The sidearm strapped to his leg in a tactical black nylon holster fell into the other category. Jayne had pet names for all his weapons. There was his Callahan full-bore auto-lock rifle, of course, which he had christened Vera, and there was the massive.38-caliber Civil War-styled wheelgun he was toting now, known affectionately as Boo. Scooting around River, Jayne joined Zoë and Mal at the top of Serenity’s loading ramp.
“I don’t know why you two hate Alliance Day so much,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for the war, we wouldn’t be here.”
Mal didn’t say a word. Explaining irony to Jayne was like teaching a fish to bark.
“Make us proud, you guys!” a voice called down cheerily from the catwalk. It was Kaylee, Serenity’s resident ray of sunshine, as well as a prodigiously gifted engineer. Then her eyes got huge. “Gŏu shĭ! How many gorramn warning signs are there on those things?”
“The boxes are busy,” River said in a matter-of-fact tone.
Kaylee cast a stricken look at Mal, then looked back at the crates. Then back at him. “Uh, Captain?” she said.
“We keep that powder cool and dry and it’s all good, you hear?” he said.
Kaylee nodded and returned her gaze to the crates one more time. Mal had a feeling she was counting how many decals there were. And not liking the total.
As if to distract herself, she turned to River. “Hey, River, Shepherd and I are making casserole for dinner. Wanna help?”
“Okay,” River said brightly, skipping up the stairs to join her. “I’ll do the chopping.” She made a brisk slicing motion with the edge of her hand.
“Do not let her near anything with a blade,” Mal cautioned. He beckoned to Jayne and Zoë. “You two, duty calls. Got less’n a half-hour to get to Taggart’s Bar. Better hustle.”
“Get there early, maybe we can have ourselves a little japery first,” said Jayne.
Mal shook his head. “I know what your idea of japery is, Jayne, and it ain’t gonna happen. We’re there to work, not punch folk.”
“Not even a little?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Awww.” Jayne sounded as petulant as a child. “Remind me again why I come with you on these trips.”
“’Cause you’re so damn handsome.”
Jayne frowned, puzzling it out. He decided his captain was being sincere, and grinned. “Yeah, I am at that, ain’t I?”
2
“Gorramn Alliance Day,” Zoë muttered.
Alliance Day was Persephone’s own special holiday, like Unification Day, but local. It signified the signing of the treaty that welcome Persephone into the Alliance, and Mal nursed the hope that folks celebrated it with gusto only because it was a good excuse to take off the day and get drunk. But like Unification Day, Alliance Day didn’t sit right with Mal either. Not right at all.
On lines strung across the streets, between the rooftops overhead, rows of gaudy Alliance flags — one half a blue field, one half red-and-white stripes, with a swirl of different-sized yellow stars overlaid on a red square — flapped like wagging tongues. They seemed to be taunting him: you lost, you lost, you lost… Bunting with the same pattern hung from balconies and utility poles, and yet more flags were plastered inside every dirty window frame that still held glass.
Mal, Zoë, and Jayne trudged down a winding alley, forced to jink every few steps to avoid head-on collisions with the people walking the opposite direction. A lot of them sported little plastic Alliance badges pinned to their ragged coats and hats, and more than a few had dressed for the occasion in their old Alliance uniforms, proudly displaying medals won for destroying Browncoat strongholds and slaughtering Browncoat troops.
Eyes narrowed to slits, jaw clenched tight, Mal kept pace with Zoë, who could do stoic better than anyone he had ever met, mostly by virtue of looking mildly pissed about everything all the time. Some folks said Mal was hard to figure out, but he knew he wasn’t. There was a core of bitterness that ran the length of his soul and drilled down into his heart, and there seemed no way to get rid of it, ever. He supposed that was all right. It kept him going. Kept him flying.
Didn’t necessarily keep him out of trouble, though.
Least of all on Alliance Day.
Three tipsy young women dressed in matching red satin, high-necked embroidered jackets and black trousers ran towards Mal and Zoë. Their hair was wound into round little topknots on either side of their heads. They were waving a couple of little Alliance pennants on sticks and giggling at each other.
“Happy Alliance Day!” one of them cried, and they all burst into shrieks of laughter.
Zoë uttered a caustic oath as she sidestepped and pushed past them, and that made Mal smile. Zoë losing her temper was just the funnest fun ever. And under normal circumstances it would bode well for their bar run. The prospect of cracking a bushel of Alliance-loving heads and breaking up some furniture would have raised Mal’s sagging spirits. However, there was work to do, and that took precedence.
Stepping up beside Zoë, he played dumb. “What was that all about?” he asked.