“Don’t take this the wrong way, Zoë, but that doesn’t really seem in your wheelhouse. Inara’s, yes, but yours?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way?” his wife said, stiffening. “How am I meant to take it? You’re saying Inara is more attractive than I am?”
“No! I’m not saying anything of the sort, don’t be mad, it came out wrong, I take it back.” Wash’s voice rose in pitch until it was virtually a bat squeak.
“I’m just messing with you.”
“Phew.”
“You’re right, I don’t have Inara’s skills. But never underestimate the power of a hair toss, a pair of big eyes and showing off a little skin.” Zoë pouted her lips and shimmied her shoulders. “Worked on you, after all, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, but I’m easy.”
“Oh, Wash.” She stroked his cheek. “All men are.”
As she exited the bridge, he called out after her, “Good luck! Or, er, not too much good luck. Maybe no luck. I don’t know. Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, young lady. And be home by ten.”
Zoë chuckled. “Okay, Dad.”
Jayne joined her on the catwalk, descending into the cargo bay with her.
“You tidied up Simon’s and River’s bunks, like I asked?” Zoë said.
“Clean as a nun’s panties. Bedding and personal effects all stowed away. You wouldn’t know anyone’d been there.”
“Good.”
Kaylee met them at the foot of the stairs. “I just checked the crates,” she said, talking in low, urgent tones. “Something River said got me rattled. Ran a full-spectrum diagnostic — temperature, vibration, electromagnetic frequency, radiation, seal integrity. River was right, Lord knows how. Something’s changed in those boxes. The contents are heating up.” She made a face. “Kaboom.”
“What’s our solution?” Zoë asked briskly.
Kaylee had a quick answer for that. “Maybe we can cool down the cargo to slow down the reaction. Make it as cold as we can.”
“Seal off the hold and open the bay,” Jayne said with a gleam in his eye. “Don’t get much colder than space.”
“Great idea,” Zoë said.
“Yeah?” Jayne sounded a little surprised. Zoë could only assume this was because it wasn’t often his ideas were classified as great. Or even listened to.
“Yes. But it’s going to have to wait. We got company.”
She hit the switch to operate the cargo-bay ramp. It had barely opened before a dozen-strong Alliance team, in full body armor and helmets, marched into the cargo bay in lockstep. They fanned out, most with weapons drawn and aimed towards Zoë, Jayne and Kaylee. A few carried compact, ruggedized flight cases.
Zoë, Kaylee, and most reluctantly Jayne raised their hands in surrender.
“Do not touch your weapons,” the Alliance officer at the front of the pack said. “We will disarm you ourselves.”
As the other Alliance officers were seeing to that, their leader asked, “Who’s in charge here?”
“That’d be me,” Zoë said. “Zoë Washburne, acting captain of this here vessel.”
“And I’m Major Bernard of the I.A.V. Stormfront.” He looked all three of them up and down, then said, “Is this your entire crew?”
“No, sir,” Zoë said. “Our pilot is still up in the bridge.”
“Get him or her down here on the double.”
After Zoë relayed the order to Wash over the intercom, Major Bernard flashed his credentials at her so fast she couldn’t read them. Not that she needed to. The patrol cruiser parked alongside Serenity was credentials aplenty.
“By authority of the Union of Allied Planets,” Bernard said in a monotone, “I’ll need access to all crew documentation and bills of lading on cargo presently carried aboard this ship. Also vessel registration forms and tax licenses. Any attempt to conceal information or cargo will be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Are you carrying any passengers who are not crew?”
“No, sir,” Zoë said. “This is not a passenger ship.”
He looked around at the largely bare cargo bay. “Did you just offload a consignment or is this the state of your business?”
“It comes and goes, sir,” Zoë replied. Usually goes, she added inwardly.
“While I’m checking the paperwork, my team will run a routine search of the entire ship.”
“A search for what?” Kaylee said, all wide-eyed innocence.
“Contraband or undocumented individuals,” Bernard said. Then his eyes narrowed, and he addressed all three of them. “This can’t be your first rodeo. You know exactly what we do.”
“Don’t want anyone touching Vera with their dirty paws,” Jayne growled under his breath. “She don’t like it.”
“Vera?” said Bernard. “There’s a fifth person on board?”
“Nope. She’s a gun. Got the license for her and everything, before you ask.”
Major Bernard did a double take. “You name your—? Never mind.”
“All the paperwork you want is stowed in the galley,” Zoë said. Then, flicking a lock of her hair behind her ear and lowering her voice suggestively, she said, “You’d be most comfortable working in there, Major. You can spread everything out on the dining table. I can even make you some tea if you’d like.”
The change in her tone and attitude was not lost on Bernard. A small smile broke his blunt, coarse features. “That’s most accommodating of you, Acting Captain Washburne,” he said.
As he and Zoë made for the dining area, Bernard’s subordinates began opening their flight cases and taking out multiple-reading scanners. Whose infrared setting, Zoë knew, could pick up the body heat of a fruit fly through ten feet of vanadium steel.
Bernard sat himself down at the dining table and Zoë spread out the documents in front of him.
“Hmmm,” he said. “According to the registration this ship has two shuttles, but on approach we saw both bays are currently empty. Where are your shuttles, Acting Captain Washburne?”
“Please, call me Zoë.”
“Very well.” Again, that small smile, accompanied by a tiny, avid glint in the eye. Major Bernard was not a handsome man but he was, it seemed, vain enough to think that a woman like Zoë might be attracted to him. She noted the wedding band on his left hand. She noted, too, that he was making some effort to hide it from her. “I’ll repeat the question, Zoë. Where are you shuttles?”
“We’ve had bad luck with shuttles lately,” she told him. “Had to leave ’em both on Whitefall. They’re awaiting spare parts for necessary refitting.”
“Kind of risky going into the Black without one, don’t you think?”
“Risk is built into the price for our services,” she said.
Wash appeared in the dining-room doorway. His strawberry-blond hair was sticking up every which way like he had just rolled out of bed. But then it always looked like that. “I was told someone needed to see me,” he said. “Went down to the cargo bay but got sent up here.”
Major Bernard stared grimly at Wash’s eye-searingly colorful Hawaiian shirt and the toy dinosaur poking a toothy head out of his breast pocket.
“Who might you be?” Bernard said.
“Hoban Washburne, pilot, husband.” Then, remembering Zoë’s plan, Wash said, “But not husband to this lady. No, sir.”
Bernard frowned. “But you have the same surname.”
“Brother and sister,” Wash said.
Zoë shot him a scowl over Bernard’s head.
“Adopted brother and sister,” Wash amended. “It’s funny, though. People often tell us how much we look alike.”
“They do?” said Bernard, peering from Wash to Zoë and back again.
“Act alike, at any rate. Similar mannerisms. Similar gestures.” Wash attempted to mimic a typical Zoë-esque posture, cocking a hip and resting his thumbs in his belt. He also widened his eyes in emulation of her naturally large eyes, although whereas on her it looked captivating, on him it looked just plain demented. “Like twins, some say.”