“All right,” he said. “Pay them in full.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then get a crew together, follow them to their ship, and kill them.”
“Yes, sir.”
Once he finished his report to Asher House and admitted to himself that staying in his home was no longer safe, it took him three minutes to shut everything down and get what he needed, and then twenty minutes to walk across town to the place he’d already prepared.
It wasn’t the safest place, but it was safer than home. And he had installed enough gear to do a reasonable amount of work once he got it set up; and certainly enough to get hold of Asher House and say, Why in the gorram hell did you just blow off my last eight months of work?
He did not, of course, get hold of the House and say that. The very best thing that could happen with such a course is that he’d get no answer. But he had the equipment to do his own checking.
Malcolm Reynolds, Zoë Washburne.
And if that didn’t bring up anything directly, it would at least be a place to start.
Those bastards in Asher House had blown eight months of investigation right at the point where—well, maybe they had a good reason. They had better have a good reason.
In any case, they had trained him to sniff out and sift through facts he wasn’t supposed to be able to get access to; so, one way or another, he was going to find out what the gorram reason was.
He set up the miscues and false addresses very carefully before entering the search parameters.
Two hours later he was scowling at the screens as if it were their fault. A little voice in his head told him that something the House went to so much trouble to hide must be too big for the likes of him.
But eight months of work, of good work, of important work, all washed away in an hour. No, no. If they were going to do that, he was bloody well going to know why.
He wiped his hands on his shirt and got down to serious work.
“So that’s the short version,” she said.
“You rescued a fed.”
“Yeah.”
“And now Mal wants to go back alone to get the payment.”
“To get the payment, and, unless I miss my guess, to find out about that fed.”
“He’s being a hero again, isn’t he?”
She nodded.
Wash gave the boat some throttle, and Zoë felt Serenity lift, followed by a small lurch as the I-grav kicked in.
“I don’t like him going down there by himself,” said Zoë.
“Yeah, well, the us being up here thing and the him being down there thing is a problem if anything goes wrong.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
“Of course, what are the chances of anything going wrong?”
“That’s the other thing I’m thinking.”
“Dead certain?”
“Pretty much.”
“So,” he said, “what do we do? I could wait until the shuttle is launched, then land. I mean, once he’s gone, you’re in charge.”
“I know.”
“Mal won’t like that much.”
“I know.”
They didn’t speak for a moment, while Wash made the calculations for a geosynchronous orbit, and tapped it in. Then Zoë felt his eyes on her.
“Zoë, what are you thinking?”
She didn’t answer.
“You’re planning to go after him, aren’t you?”
“Of course.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.”
“I know.”
“But you’re going to anyway.”
She nodded.
Her husband sighed and turned his attention back to guiding Serenity.
He was careful not to drink too much, confining himself to beer that he nursed carefully, and making certain to eat. There was something going on, and he was in the middle of it, and if he made a misstep, it could cost him his freedom, or worse.
The feds knew he was here, but hadn’t made contact with him. That was dangerous—it meant they might be planning to turn on him. They had once before, and he scowled at the memory. And Mal and Zoë were around, probably pissed as hell at him, and that was dangerous. And there was something strange going on, what with Mal and Zoë having saved the ass of someone he didn’t recognize, and that was dangerous. It had obviously been a trap, but for who? For him?
He could cut and run.
He still had the ginseng sitting in a rented locker; he could sell that for enough to buy passage off world. Go back and call the feds again, try for another meeting? But if he’d just missed a trap, then he’d be committing suicide by walking into the security office again.
How did this get so gorram complicated?
He muttered and drank some more beer.
The money for the crazy girl would be good, so good. But what good was money if you ended up dead or in an Alliance lockdown?
He should play it safe. He should sell that ginseng and get passage out, right now. Tonight.
He went up to the bar to get another beer, brought it back to his table, drank some, and looked around the canteen, slowly filling up with well-dressed citizens—just the sort who could afford what he was selling, and would probably love to have a rare, fine tea. He could do it. He could be away from this gorram world by tomorrow morning.
He drank some more beer.
“Naw,” he decided.
He looked from the doctor, to Kaylee, to River. “Okay,” he said. “Here’s the situation: Mal went back down in the shuttle to get our payment, and Zoë followed him in the other shuttle to keep him out of trouble.”
He bit his lip, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable. “So, the question is, do we do what Mal wanted, or do we go down there?”
“We go after them,” said Kaylee. “That’s what the Cap’n would do if it were one of us.”
“I know,” said Wash. “Only there are two problems with that. The first is, it’s really Simon and River who are running the risk. Second, what can we do if they’re in trouble?”
Simon shifted uncomfortably. “As to the first,” he said, “I should point out that, uh, you are all harboring known fugitives, so it isn’t just us running the risk.”
“You have a point there,” said Wash.
“As to the second,” said Simon, “I’m not sure. The thing is, I’m not sure what they’ll run into, if they do run into anything.”
“It just don’t seem right to sit up here and do nothin’,” said Kaylee.
“I know,” said Wash.
“I’d feel better about disobeying the Captain if we had a reason. Are they in touch with us? Will we know if something goes wrong?”
“They’re both talking to Serenity, but not to each other. Mal doesn’t know that Zoë followed him yet.”
“They won’t be here for two days,” said River.
“Mal and Zoë?” asked Simon.
“They want their thing,” said River. “They’re a long way off, but the dead travel fast.”
“River?” said Simon.
“Two by two,” she said.
River stood up and left the dining room, heading toward her cabin. Simon started to follow her, stopped, turned back to Wash, looked at Kaylee, and spread his hands. “Do whatever you think is right,” he said, and hurried after his sister.
“Well, that makes it easier,” said Wash. He sighed. A memory tugged at his sleeve, then, and he said, “You know, Kaylee, just a few days before we dropped off the Shepherd, we were sitting around reminiscing—”
“I miss him,” said Kaylee wistfully.
“Me too. We were reminiscing, and he said something about how a lot of things would have been a lot easier if we had listened to River and just believed what she said.”