It was a moment, and the wave would advance, and then recede, and maybe something would still be there, and maybe it would not.
She could taste it like a single drop of lemon juice.
That one place, that one time.
And all she had to do was something she had never done before.
But it was not as difficult a decision as it could have been, because for her, failure would mean little pieces of herself scattered about Hera, and They would never be able to touch her after that.
Her hesitation was so brief, her brother didn’t even notice it.
“Yes there is,” she said. “I can save them.”
Mal clicked off the comm, looked at Jayne, looked at Zoë, and shrugged.
“Did you catch any of that, sir?”
“I picked up that your mister is a busy guy.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And it seems like my boat has got a hole put in it.”
“They found her with the gun.”
“Speaking of guns—” said Jayne.
“So it seems,” said Mal to Zoë. “And someone wasn’t paying attention to the proximity—”
“And they put a camo field up in front of her.”
Mal stopped. “A camo field? Where would they get technology like that?”
Zoë stared at him.
“Oh,” he said at last. “Yeah, we ran into a few of those, didn’t we?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not five thousand miles from this here spot.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jayne cleared his throat. “I know Zoë carries a backup piece under her arm. If you could maybe—”
“Jayne, I’m getting to you. In the meantime, your job is to create as large a field of silence around you as you can manage. Is the idea coming through?”
Jayne scowled loudly.
“So, what now, sir?”
“I don’t know. My boat has a hole in it, and we’re stuck on the gorram world I hate the most, where we’ve just busted a fugitive out of jail after saving the life of an Alliance agent, and I’m trying to resist the temptation to put a hole in the fugitive we’ve just rescued.”
“What did I—”
“So I’m open to suggestions, Zoë.”
“I suggest you answer Jayne’s question, sir.”
“Answer his question?”
“He was asking what he did.”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” said Mal.
“Exactly,” said Zoë.
“Oh. Right.” He turned to Jayne. “What did you do?”
“Huh? I didn’t do a ruttin’ thing! I got a little drunk and clocked a loudmouth—”
“No, Jayne. I’m not talking about last night.”
“Then what are you… oh.”
“Yeah, oh.”
“You kicked me off your gorram ship! I wasn’t on your gorram crew!”
“So you couldn’t wait to find out what you could get for River’s scalp.”
“So?”
Oddly, Mal realized he was not suddenly taken with the urge to kill Jayne. He was suddenly taken with the urge to shoot Jayne in both kneecaps, let him lie there for a while, then kill him.
“All right,” he said, keeping his voice even—which required more effort than he’d used in several near-run skirmishes. “We’ll get into that later. Right now, I want to know what happened.”
“Huh? You know what happened. I called the feds on that wangu de shagua gen ta shenjingbing de meimei. What else do you need to know?”
“How did you call them?”
“Huh? I got hold of a comm unit—”
“What comm unit? Where?”
“In that same gorram security hut you just busted me out of.”
“They have a direct link?”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“I thought they were a private security force.”
“They are, and they’re also the Locals.”
“That’s right, so they are. All right, what happened?”
“How ’bout we talk about how I didn’t do nothing wrong, seeing I wasn’t on—”
Jayne broke off as Mal drew his pistol and leveled it at Jayne’s face from a distance of around three inches. Mal heard the familiar sound of Zoë’s carbine coming from her hip, and knew he was covered.
“There are a number of things going on right now, Jayne, and I need to learn what they are, and so I need you to answer questions. The only thing I want to do less than talk about anything else is explain to you why I need those answers. So you’re going to tell me what I want to know, or I am going to start putting holes in you, and I’m not too particular about where they are, or how many. Now do we have a meeting of minds on this subject?”
Jayne glowered. Mal waited.
“You keep saying what happened, and I keep telling you. So—”
“So tell me how it played out.”
“I walked in, said I wanted to get a message to the feds. They set up the link—”
“Just like that?”
“I had to do some convincing.”
“How did you convince them?”
“I asked them how it would go down with them if they didn’t let me.”
“All right. Then what?”
“They gave me the mic. I told the Feds about the crazy girl.”
“Uh huh. And what did they say?”
“We negotiated.”
“They wanted the details?”
“Yeah. I said I wanted money first.”
“Did you tell them who she was?”
Jayne barely hesitated. “Yeah.”
“And?”
“They said they’d have someone there to meet me and we’d agree on a price.”
“When?”
“They said an hour.”
“Right,” said Mal. Yeah, okay. No way there was a fed station that close. And if they wanted to send someone special, it might be days. So they’d grabbed up the nearest agent, knocked him off whatever assignment he was on, and—
“And all this time, what were the security officers doing?”
“Huh?”
“While you were talking to the feds, where were the officers, or the Locals, who set you up with the connection?”
“What do you mean? They were just sitting there.”
“Just sitting there.”
“Yeah.”
“Listening.”
“I suppose they might have been.”
Mal sighed. “You know, Jayne, you’ve done some stupid things from time to time.”
“Maybe.”
“I think this time you pegged the meter.”
“What the—”
Zoë spoke for the first time. “Sir, could they have put it together, got word to Sakarya, and set it up that fast?”
“In an hour? Why not? This isn’t the Alliance, this is just one guy running things himself. And he’s someone who believes in moving fast.”
“Yes, sir. That he is.”
Jayne said, “What in the—”
“Shut up,” said Mal.
“Now what, sir?”
“I don’t know. Now we try to not get caught until we can figure a way out of here.”
“What about him?” she gestured toward Jayne.
“We could kill him.”
“Hey!” said Jayne.
“Yes, sir. Or just shoot him in the leg and let him get caught.”
“Maybe there’s a reward.”
“If that’s a joke,” said Jayne, “I ain’t laughing none.”
“And what if it isn’t a joke? Then you gonna laugh?”
Jayne stared at him. “You gonna do me, go ahead and do me. Quit yakking.”
“I gotta figure some. You got any special reason why I ought to let you live, Jayne?”
“I didn’t mention you or the boat.”
“When?”
“When they questioned me. They said they’d drop the charges and let me go if I told them everything.”